Sigil

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox@Zman

Hello all, and welcome to the end of one half of the time skip I've been telling you all I would be imposing. From that time to this, all of your actions have taken up the entirety of your character's morning and some of the afternoon. For the folks in transit, this isn't so bad. You're getting distance out behind you. Great. For everyone else who is poking about the Vineyard, this is slightly less ideal. I saw those die rolls. I know. BUT ANYWAY, there's precious little daylight left, and we're going to basically do a little something similar this time around for the second half of this time skip until people are where they need to be, so, please let me know what your character's plans are for the second half of the day and let's get some die rolls covered.

For those wishing to pursue a more fleshed-out dialogue between PCs and/or NPCs, please remember that making a collaborative post is a fully valid way to get the posting requirements of all parties involved taken care of in tandem. And it saves overall game time. Just remember the rule about not speaking for named NPCs. Those are for me to direct. But there's a world of possibilities there, so long as things don't stretch too far into the idea of metastuffs.

But back to our standard stuff - Please be in touch with me via our Discord for questions, concerns, if I missed something critical, or if you need to resolve a die roll. Thanks again!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Southmoor

Coach House

Vineyard Estate

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: A few more clouds began to gather in an otherwise mostly clear sky. The warmest portion of the day has passed, and while it hasn't dropped dramatically, there is a noticeable change in the temperature. It is cold.

Time: Late afternoon to early evening. This time of the year, night comes earlier and earlier, so the number upon the face of a clock may be at odds with the light in the winter sky.

Ambience: No new precipitation, but that hardly matters when the whole of the landscape is covered in the crystalline, white stuff. No melt, nor even partial melt today as the temperatures remained constant for the vast majority of the day. This lack of variance in the day is likely a reason that the few workers available at the Vineyard wrapped up their duties as quickly as possible and got back to where it was warm. The same might be said of the people of Southmoor, who would like nothing more than to finish up their duties and return to hearth and home.

The road between Southmoor and Avonshire Township drifts lazily through the higher points of the moors, which is good considering that the lower reaches are perpetually damp and the whole of the area is blanketed in thick snow. The road itself remains more or less traversable, though if one desires less hazardous travel one must take their time. Occasionally, the river meanders close enough to the road to be seen, or rather, the ice which covers it on this particularly frosty day. It's all very lovely in its own way.

*****

Along the waypoint, the mule now known as Old Boy seemed to be appreciating the attention, even in the frigid tempertures. The wagon stands still, with canvas flapping slightly in the low winds every so often, and from the lack of appreciable disturbance in the snow, it doesn't look like anyone had been out this far in at least a day. Nevertheless, this remains a place where rock formations provide a little shelter from weather, and a large, flat shelf of stone might allow for an easy picnic location, were it not covered in snow.

Back at the Vineyard, the swordpoint decision made much earlier that morning wasn't bearing the sort of fruit which one might have hoped. Kosara's jaunt into randomness, allowing chance to guide her steps in a way that worked remarkably well for her before did not overtly assist in the party's overall goals with figuring out and/or rectifying whatever plagued this land. The swordpoint led Kosara in a more or less easterly direction, cutting diagonally through the trees set up as a slender windbreak and moving her a little ways north of the watchtower. Continuing on this path brought Kosara to an elevated location near the river. Still with a crust of white-grey ice atop and a bit of a drop until one gets down to it, it is objectively a pretty good view. From here, one can see the back of the Estate House, the watchtower, and most of the beach area surrounded by rocky facings set aside for deliveries by river.

In and around Southmoor, things are a little more lively than the Vineyard, though admittedly not by much. One can easily note the presence of others by means of the occasional occupational noise and by the thin trails f smoke which rise from individual cottage chimneys. Yes, people are alive and active in the sleepy little settlement, even if that activity is mostly taking place inside. "Hey," begins Lizbeth, still armed and armored for battle while simultaneously pulling a scarf about her head and neck, "I know where Mr. Toombes lived with his family. His body was delivered there in a crate. It's sometimes customary to sit and wait with the body for a couple to a few days before they bury it. I'm not sure why they do, but... did you want to go there?"

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: On The Road Action: N/A Bonus Action: Morty, Nox Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Finally catching sight of Baronfjord arriving from town, Victoria rose from her seat and gave a practiced, yet ultimately unnecessary wave of her hand. It wasn't like the guy was going to have issues picking her out of a crowd, even if there were a crowd. Instead, the mostly sparse comings and goings of the place seemed to accent her presence, like putting an outline to an illustration. She stood out.

Her traveling companion asked if she had been waiting long, which might have made a lesser person extend a one-finger salute or respond with sarcasm. But being a lady of some tact (at least in that moment), Victoria responded with a genial, "I shouldn't say too long. Though I do worry about our time."

A quick change of subject was made as Victoria have mental command for her Morty to bring the errand cart around to the wagon's rear. When she spoke, it was with a soupçon of formality. "I would be grateful, Mr. Chedgusah, if you would lend me a hand with my baggage. Thank you so much."

So with her errand cart, it's contents, her Morty and herself in the vehicle, Victoria doffed her extraordinarily bardy hat and pulled her pashmina closer around herself. It wasn't much better inside the wagon, but it was a little, and a little counted. She briefly noted the coffin which was still back here, wondering if she might be able to use it for warmth and sleep later on in the trip. She filed that away for another moment and, to take her mind off of things for a while, went back to her books. The study of humanoid anatomy was intriguing to Victoria, as was the possibility of making alterations that a living creature could not support and remain living, but an undead one would find useful, even to the point of thriving. Then something caught her attention in the back of the wagon. "...hey, is that the Sheriff's chamberpot still back here?"

Yes, it was all coming together.

Immersed in her books and whatever conversation she got into with Baronfjord, it barely seemed like an hour or two (though it assuredly was longer) until Victoria noticed that they were coming up to the halfway point in the road between Southmoor and Avonshire. The waypoint/rest area where they had taken a light lunch all those weeks ago, when it was the tail of autumn and not the middle of winter. It was later than she would have liked, only having hit the halfway point, but they needed to stop. "BB, have you been driving the whole time? That's extraordinary! You're getting really good at this. Honestly." Was it flattery? Maybe. But slow moving aside, there wasn't a single complaint from the Bard about it.

Victoria did voice a relevant opinion, however. "Our mule has been going all day. He needs warm water, and to be dried off and brushed down. Maybe rested for a half hour." That last part was hard to say. They were already burning through too much daylight as it was. "I'll handle the water and fodder of you get the other. There's a kit in the back. But we need to pull it over for a least a little bit, if you would, please."

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox@Zman

And here we are again. Update has been updated, and the short time skip has been implemented. As it sits right now, only one person has dipped into the option to train their upcoming skills/tool/language, and no one has posted as if we were readying for a time skip. No worries, we have been moved ahead anyway. A similar one will take place next update to get our newest player up to the rest of the group, leaving us at nighttime. Please plan accordingly.

Aric will be walking up the same road that Victoria and Baronfjord are riding in their wagon upon, headed toward one another. If there is a reason for them to recognize one another, that might be an interaction. If there isn't, or we don't want to belabor the possibility, crossing paths in opposite directions is a viable option. This reminds me: @Zman, please roll a Survival check in our Discord for Aric. DC 12.

Continued driving of the wagon will count as Baronfjord practicing his upcoming proficiency for the cycle. But we will need to see how he's working through it for the first half. @Arty Fox, please roll me a Land Based Vehicles check for BB, Dex based, half proficiency. DC is also 12.

Per our usual, please be in touch with me in our Discord for die roll requests, rulings, questions, etc. and have the spiffiest of days.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Southmoor

Coach House

Vineyard Estate

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: The temperature never quite tipped above freezing, as one might be able to tell from a lack of settling snow, but at least the wind is behaving. Mostly. A few clouds dot the sky in uneven intervals, casting a light blanket over the pale, faraway sun, until it proverbially kicks it off.

Time: Mid afternoon. One might take an early Tea now, if one were inclined. The sun stands high in the sky, though night comes early this time of the year, so do not be fooled.

Ambience: The snow remains thick and consistent, not having compressed at all by he higher temperatures of the risen sun. Naturally, this means that this day is colder than the day prior. At least incrementally enough to maintain the omnipresent ice and snow. Workers in and around the Rose River Vineyard are few, far between, and mostly keeping indoors.

The Coach House has been given a once-over by the domestic staff in black and white, which have been assigned to handle the incidentals of the group's presence; restocking firewood as needed, getting lists together for larder and pantry storage levels; basically covering the basics. Tight lips and quick action followed their presence, even as they attempted to stay away from anything resembling eye contact. Rumors are interesting things, depending upon who's telling them. And only a foolish person might believe that there are no rumors about the Adventurers at the Rose River Vineyard.

The moors are overall at a white standstill. The soft, rolling hills greatly resemble static waves of purest, cottony ice. The highs and lows equally bear the blanket of recent snows, though the lower, wetter areas (for those familiar with the land) seem to have collected a greater depth of snowfall, leading to hazardous conditions for the unwary soul who steps from the marked road. As a matter of consequence, the road isn't as burdened with the frigid, white stuff, as it lays across mostly even, mostly higher land. But even aside from that, for anyone who has been upon the Vineyard may notice that the brunt of the recent blizzard seemed to take it a little easier on the road, and on the parts of the moors not too far away from the borders of Arnaud L'Rose's lands.

*****

Midday in winter is never a great time to be at work. One's efforts result in blood moving around one's body with heat, which turns trodden-through snow into wet clothing. In time, this becomes uncomfortable at best, and with the promise that this is the warmest part of the day, things may become moreso. Perhaps this is why the small, remaining staff of the Rose River Tavern spent very little time out-of-doors this day, as things were not getting any warmer.

Along the road just outside of Avonshire, a curious man in a straw hat gave Aric a broad, cheerful smile, and lifts each of his feet, one at a time, in an exaggerated manner. "G'Mornin'!" he repeated with a shrug, then turned his back to the stranger and continued his walk into the Township. Not to be impolite, he waved his free hand behind him with a quick utterance of, "Nice day for fishin'! Huah huh!" as his form advanced toward the walled Township of Avonshire.

Travelers upon the road will notice a distinct lack of travelers going any further than a couple miles, from one village to the next and one farm to the next. From what one can tell, looking out among the highs and lows along the road, that's all one can see - farms and villages - for the vast majority of the north/south road between Southmoor and the Township. There is an established halfway point, more or less, which would have been reachable by noon under good conditions. Unfortunately, the conditions are best described as "tolerable" instead. This point is one which Baronfjord and Victoria had seen previously, having stopped there for a quick picnic lunch on their way to the Vineyard, though is looks fairly different when draped in precipitous white. The Waypoint was hardly a waypoint in the classical sense. It wasn't quite large enough for a large mercantile or military group to set up overnight shop, but an intimate collection of wagons and travelers might do nicely. The Waypoint was spared a lot of the accumulating snowfall, thanks to the semi-encircling collection of boulders, not including a large, flat, shelf-like stone surface which may be used for all manner of things which would require a more-or-less flat surface. Or just to get a little elevation. The center features a well-used but maintained fire pit, which does not seem to have been utilized for a while now. The saving grace to this location is that the snow is only a couple to a few inches deep here.

Back at the Vineyard, talk of dragons sparked a hint of wonder from young Lizbeth, who asked in quiet reverence, "Have you ever seen a dragon? In person, I mean. I've only ever seen pictures..." The search continued, with the girl assisting where she might, even if it seemed near to hopeless. Lizbeth it seemed, did not know exactly what they were looking for and she otherwise knew most of the Vineyard brick for brick, which made things frustrating. By the time the afternoon came around, she did finally come to a decision about Kathryn's request. "I don't know what I can do yet, with magic and fighting, right? But if you want, I am willing to try for you. Not... sorry, not every time, okay? I still need to know how to do this for myself. But we can try."

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: Southmoor (By the Road) Action: Skill Check (Performance) Bonus Action: Morty, Nox Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

More time had passed. Yet another chunk of time that Victoria wished that she was on the road. In fact, she had half a mind to re-summon her Phantom Steed and just take off, as the quasi-real mount could run like the absolute wind and, even at half speed (to be careful, naturally) it was just as fast as a runaway carriage. Unfortunately, she brought a few things along with her, which were stored in her errand cart. Her personal thrall, Morty, pulled that behind itself, and Morty most assuredly could not run like the wind. He could manage a steady trot and, thanks to his not-quite-living nature, wouldn't tire if kept at a dash indefinitely. Even so, the porcine companion could never match her noble, phantasmal mount for speed. So Victoria was bound to the snowy ground, making liberal use of her bootleather for the meantime. Good thing for her, they were very cute boots. But Victoria was the type that would look amazing, even in a shrunken burlap sack with convenient holes for her head and arms. Nevertheless, she did like her boot selection for this outing.

Victoria passed the time by using her Morty as a low bench, of sorts. It was wrapped firmly with layers of burlap, and she neatly folded her new, black and gold pashmina to use as additional cushioning for herself as she went over carefully labeled and illustrated books of humanoid anatomy, and the appropriate actions one might take to pick it apart or put it back together. Truly, this was an interesting read. Then one slipped from its perch and landed on the snow, too near the more ruddy colors of the street. Victoria picked it up and examined it, then after satisfied that it was undamaged, placed it securely away.

Perhaps reading wasn't the best use of her time (and she seemed to have a lot of it) so she switched over to the thing she did best: Music. Victoria overturned her extraordinarily bardy hat in her small errand cart, as if she were reaching back to the earliest portions of her career - long before she chose the more advanced teachings of the Grey Requiem - to begin busking. The practice would be considered quite beneath her at this point in her career, but boredom mixed with a distinct lack of stuff to do except wait had Victoria acting outside the box. Not necessarily her nature, however, as she did like to be the center of attention as the occasion called for it. The occasion didn't necessarily call for it, but again it was something to do. So Victoria Belmont, death-singer and funerary bard, lifted her violin to her collarbone and drew her bow across it.

The clear notes resonated with the still, crisp air, carrying farther than one might guess into the sleepy winter town of Southmoor, and for a good way down the road before her. The few residents who were going about their business stopped for a time, entranced with music which so rarely found its way into the moors of the Avonshire region. It was a grand, sweeping melody, which seemed to roll out like a great wind of beauteous notes from the established, physically striking Bard. But it didn't stop there. When the song ceased, an absence could be felt where the music once stood, which was, after dramatic pause, filled with the stunning vocalizations of the young Half-Elf. She swayed and danced as best she might upon the snowy ground, raising her arms to the air as if to supplicate the sky. Sensing this as an invitation, Victoria's raven, Nox, descended from its perch and circled closely around her several times before lighting upon an outstretched arm. The large, black bird gave an almost harmonic cry, and took to the sir once more as the song came to a gentle close.

It felt nice to perform music purely for the sake of doing so. One of the first genuine, spontaneous smiles in a while graced her features as she returned to her tiny cart to secure her belongings for travel. Victoria had quite forgotten the customary overturned hat, and so was amused to see that a grand total of six copper coins of the realm had been deposited therein. It was the unenviable truth that, regardless of one's talent and/or the quality of a show, the profit of a venue was limited by its location and the local population. Victoria smiled nonetheless. Six copper was six copper that she didn't have before, and was a token of appreciation from passersby who gave what they could comfortably afford.

It was about this time that a lumbering wagon came rolling up to Victoria's location along the road, manned by a rather familiar Dwarf. "Master Urmdrus!" she called, waving enthusiastically at the fellow.

Urmdrus brought his wagon to a stop near Victoria. "Going to town ship." The statement was rather flat. "You?"

It took a moment for the Bard to pick up on exactly what was being communicated to her. "Oh? Oh! Yes; yes I am. I was supposed to meet Baronfjord, but I am afraid if he's much longer it will be dark long before we get there." Victoria pocketed her new coins and placed her exquisitely bardy hat deftly upon her head, fitting over her set of purple flowered hair combs which held her luxurious red-auburn locks in place.

"Hmm," he grunted from upon his high seat. "Ride?" Urmdrus tapped the bench next to him.

Victoria sighed. It was a tempting offer. It really was. She took way too long considering her answer while Urmdrus patiently(?) waited. "No. Thank you, Master Urmdrus, but no. I'll see you in town. If he is too much later, he would be by himself on the road after dark, and alone. Baronfjord is still useful to me. I don't want anything unfortunate to happen. You understand, I'm sure?"

The dwarf grunted a monosyllabic acceptance and took his reins back up. "Town ship. See you there." The wagon continued its journey, rolling along the partially packed snow of the road in the direction of the Avonshire Township. He risked a glance back up the road, into town, but saw nothing familiar coming up the road behind him. Victoria was looking in that direction as well.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox@Zman

My apologies for the delay in the update. Things keep on a'happening on my end, unavoidable for the most part and annoying at the very best. But it's up. Huzzahs all around. However, I would like to reiterate the sentiment from the instructions here in the OOC from the last update - we are in an interesting position there two people are technically in transit at the time. This transit will take up the entirely of the game day, and while it might be an interesting bit of character introspection to have them share their thoughts and feelings about being on a snowy road and traveling in opposite directions, while the ones who aren't traveling interact in detail with their surroundings, it would put folks at an unequal level of opportunity. So, let's plan actions for the day, and prepare for a minor time skip until after the travelers get to where they're going.

Barring a random encounter roll going awry, that is.

Per our usual, please get with me in our Discord about thoughts, questions, concerns, and of course die rolls. Thanks again.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Southmoor

Coach House

Vineyard Estate

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: The weather remains about the same from the last hour. It is cold, as it is indeed winter, but at least the sky is bright, with minimal cloud cover, allowing a distant but quite illuminating sun to herald the day. Yes, it is still freezing. But it is tolerable to those acclimated to it, so long as they take some precautions.

Time: Morning! And what a grand, soft morning it is.

Ambience: As the morning progresses, the few workers left upon the grounds of the Rose River Vineyard begin to make their rounds. Mostly custodial or domestic staff that one may see buzzing in or around the Estate House. It is still a lovely day, as snow covered winter days allow, though there does seem to be an understandable lack of cheerfulness from the locals.

The Coach House is a bit less occupied at this point, which is to be expected. Today is the scheduled day for Vineyard staff to clean and resupply the dwelling, which is notable by the presence of two persons in simple black-and-white livery pulling a cart behind them, in the general direction of the Coach House. One wonders what sights and experiences may befall them when they reach their intended destination.

*****

A fair piece to the north of the Vineyard, upon the road leaving the Avonshire Township, a scene unfolded that might be considered strange by anyone not from the area. A fellow in a straw hat and sandals was being put to light questioning in the middle of a snowy field, concerning the events of Harvestide. This year, as the locals will attest, was eventful in many wrong ways. The Fisherman's answer came with a bright, affirming grin, "Mornin'! Nice day for fishing, ain't it?"

The town of Southmoor, no more than a short ride or a moderate walk away from the Rose River Vineyard, seemed to have been less beaten down by the snowfall. It was still heavy upon the ground, but seemed to lack quite as dramatic of an aftermath as the Vineyard itself. Be it a trick of nature or the manipulation of it, was anyone's guess. Not that it was part of the thought process of any of the locals. They went about their business in the proud, quiet manner that people of the land do, though on this occasion, a few chose to either initiate or respond to the casual salutations of the purple clad lady who looked immensely out of place, waiting by the side of the road.

Back at the Vineyard, Urmdrus shrugged from atop his wagon. It wasn't a dismissive gesture, so much as it was a means of breaking off conversation with his overly expressive (comparative to himself) Tiefling acquaintance. He bore all of the signs of a fellow who wished to get on the road as soon as possible. As such, he didn't even bother to shift more than a few inches in the seat upon his wagon to finish his few words, and nudge the lumbering vehicle into motion. Urmdrus removed himself from the Vineyard as soon as he was able.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the grounds, a conversation was taking place between two Halflings. The vast majority of this conversation was quiet. Whispered, as if a great secret were being said at length, or if they merely wished to keep private things private, in the way that one might clam up a personal conversation when a serving girl steps over to collect empty ale glasses. Tarace and Barbal were not, as it turned out, particularly hungry that morning. At least, Barbal wasn't. He seemed fairly well withdrawn, as well. "Barbal dearest, the eggs are fine. Yes, I know. No, this wouldn't make me feel any better about it, either. Let's just count what blessings we have, yes? Yes." Suffice it to say, things were not the happiest with the Mosswaters at present. After a time, Tarace did turn his attention toward the offer to drop them back at their farm. "Yes, perhaps that is for the best. We shall send someone for our ponies later, I think." Barbal, for the most part, just looked a bit disappointed. Alive, albeit grumbling slightly, and not amazingly put together for productive conversation. Both moved woodenly to their former army issue, mule pulled "chariot" which presently awaited them, quietly eager to remove themselves from the situation for the time being.

Over at the watchtower, Lizbeth listened to her mentor's personal stories, even taking some mirth from the latter of the charming, if embarrassing anecdotes of days gone by. "You didn't say that out loud? No..." Her words were probably supposed to be admonishing, but her tone was light and amused, like she were discussing this with a friend instead of a dyed-in-the-wool warrior with a respectable body count, and she were an interested little girl instead of a potentially cursed, probably not fully alive anymore novice spellcaster. "No, the Tinker's boy isn't in town, really. I mean, they are in town sometimes. He's, you know, a Tinker. They travel around places away from the cities, fixing things and sharpening tools. Sometimes selling things others throw away that they can make new again. Like... do you have Tinkers in Arcanaple? Anyway, I never did go to a ball. It sounds nice, like Harvestide, but inside a big dance hall, right?" Truly, Lizbeth was a bit of a rural princess - brought up with some education and certainly with money, but lacking any experience of the upper classes or the more structured celebratory practices therein. At the very least, in that moment, Lizbeth L'Rose appeared that she felt like a person.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: Southmoor (Healer's Home -> By the Road) Action: N/A Bonus Action: Morty, Nox Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It might be said with stunning accuracy that Annick Floquet had a set of longstanding prejudices at worst, ample and direct opinions at best. It might also be said, from Victoria's personal experience with the lady, that she had powerful reasons fueling those ample and direct opinions. It was miraculous that the Bard was able to get herself into a position to be taught by her in the first place. But here they were, sitting in Madame Floquet's house, drinking a cup of hot tea.

Facing the obviousness of both Victoria's preferred school of magic and the way in which it has been used since the dawn of time, she couldn't place a heavy fault of character upon her mentor. Just mentally catalogue the disapproval and be thankful that she was learning medicine and adjacent things from her. Ironically, learning this would make her a better, more polished Necromancer - especially if she began to take an interest in Golems or flesh sculpting. But that really wasn't her primary focus with the Art.

"Thank you very much for the tea, Madame Floquet, but if I don't leave soon, I won't make it to Avonshire before dark." Victoria spoke as politely as she might, which to be fair was something she did with proficiency.

"Business there. I remember." said Annick, looking mildly annoyed. "Asking questions of a dead man. Bringing your personal pig corpse with you." That last shot was accurate but unfair.

Instead of acting with indignance, Victoria giggled, just a little. "I call him Morty. And he's more like an extension of my ...hmm... force of personality." It wasn't wholly accurate, but more or less summarized. "Given something to inhabit, within most of the rules of Animation. Morty will stop functioning after a time. He doesn't become uncontrolled; doesn't cause havok. Morty simply is, until he is not. Or until I don't want him to be. He is quite safe, for a mindless but intuitive Thrall, and I can do this to corpses which are not boars, if I like. I do find that form to be more tolerable to strangers while still being amazingly useful." She smiled behind her cup of tea. "Everyone should have their own Morty."

In a deft and uncharacteristic shift of topic, Annick rather uncomfortably said, "Yes, well, I understand that you have your Necromancer business to attend, so don't let me keep you. Just try not to get yourself killed; gods forbid you make me happy. But my daughter would miss you. Seems you're all she talks about these days."

Ignoring more of the obvious, Victoria responded, "That's sweet. Annabelle has been a very good friend to me these last weeks, and I have learned a lot from her example. Where is she, anyway? I would not mind seeing her before I go."

"She had to slip out. Take care of some things. Might be back in an hour or so." It was stated flatly. "Here," Annick continued, handing Victoria a basket containing cinnamon scented bread and jars of preserved fruit. "Keep you warm for the trip. I know you like our pears here, so... Just bring the basket back, alright?" The last bit showed a dramatic change in tone.

"I shall do just that," answered Victoria, rising from her chair. "Thank you very much for your hospitality, and please tell Annabelle I'm sorry I missed her this morning." She paused briefly, "I don't know what to expect at the Vineyard, or if it's going to come this way. If something big happens..."

Annick interrupted, "I've been preparing for Something Big to happen for decades. Since my girl was born. Before, even. You do your business and we'll see you after. Go on, now."

A handful of minutes later, Victoria found herself at the side of the road leading out of Southmoor to the north, sitting comfortably upon her Morty as if he was a low stool. Her Raven Familiar, Nox, let out a casual CAW into the cold morning air. She tried not to think about the cold, instead wondering if Baronfjord got her message and wondered when he would be coming by; her hope being that he was only a short while behind her. So she waited, thumbing through one of the new texts on loan from Annick and occasionally waving or winking at townsfolk passing by on their early morning errands.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox@Zman

It's me again, which means our update has been updated. No no, no applause, just throw money. But anyway... Go ahead and get your rolls in for whatever you intend on doing in or around the Vineyard. It occurs to me that, the ones who are traveling all day aren't going to be playing with the same rules on the progression of time as the ones poking about the Vineyard for a good long while, and/or working on increasing their areas of study. So we have to reconcile this by speeding through epic buttloads of hours in the day and reduce them to a few simple rolls. Otherwise, were going to have a lot of RP updates that look like, "You pass another series of snowy hills. What do you do?" and frankly, that's less fun than I imagine it sounds. And it doesn't sound great. Let's take the opportunity to speed through most of the day, shall we?

To that note, as per our usual, get with me in our Discord about die rolls, questions, concerns, etc., and thanks for joining me on the epic and spiffy tale of Avonshire: Wintering In Wine Country. Huzzah!