[i][h3]The Vale[/h3][b]The Town,[/b]
[b]Currently[/b][/I]

It was not long as the adventurers and heroes of the light set about on their early morning in this strange land that the emptiness caught up with them. Like a town inhabited at most by wayward ghosts, no more did a candle burn or a fireplace billow. It was silent, lit only by the dawning radiance of the great sun's golden beams as they shown down from the impossible mountain tops well beyond in the distance. This, despite their welcome warmth and protection, did not erase the feeling of unease that they held with them; that every dark corner was an avenue for the Kingdom of Darkness to spring a trap from.

The guide that was the purple gnome however, offensively dressed as he was in such a humble neck of the wild wood, marched himself out the door and saw it fit to collect one of the feathers of the great birds they had cast out the window. Admiring it, almost as large he himself, he presented it to the entourage of fellow wanderers.

"Yep! Just as I thought! They still came back to life when the dawn arrived!"

He looked about for a moment, noting a few others and then the place the midnight orb had landed. Now not a trace of it but the earth's indent remain, instead the tremendous tracks of avian feet and but a few more pitch feathers. The gnome gathered a few more and pocketed them, presumably to serve as quills for his appetite of magical inscription or even for some sort of arcane ritual; Wick and Haemar were the most likely to know of such things if at all.

"Anyway... on to the [i]Hall[/i] we go, hopefully the [i]Green Man[/i] will meet us-"

The gnome leapt back as darkness erupted from all around them, their walk through the town not having gone far. Shadows twisted and manifest, bleeding up from the ground into roughly human silhouettes and shuddering to life. More worrisome, something different accompanied them; it stood beside the two dark soldiers and their shadowed blades and shields, yet instead it carried a sizable axe, one that could easily strike down a man in a fell blow like an executioner's stroke.

"Not good, not good!" Birbin chimed in as he stepped back anxiously, looking to his cohorts, of whom by comparison were far more heroic in nature. "They're out too soon! We need to hurry!"

[hider=Effects]
One mysterious midnight shadow wielding a black greataxe is accompanied by two [i]Shadow Soldiers[/i] and six [i]Shadows[/i]. They used their surprise round, having succeeded on their Stealth check, to manifest and appear in position. Theodore is now the first one in initiative after the surprise round.

[b]Score[/b]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieoKLL-6zjA]To Battle[/url]

[b]Map[/b]
[url=https://www.myth-weavers.com/map.html#id=4370]Town[/url]

[b]Initiative Order[/b][list][*] Theodore (19)
[*] Katia (16)
[*] [i]Shadow Soldiers (15)[/i]
[*] Thea (14)
[*] [i]Night Fury (13)[/i]
[*] Wick (9)
[*] [i]Birbin (9)[/i]
[*] Haemar (8)
[*] Cesar (4)
[*] [i]Shadows (4)[/i]
[/list]
[/hider]
[@Big Dread], [@Cu Chulainn], [@Gordian Nought], [@Hekazu], [@JBRam2002], [@Zverda]