Side Jaunt - Deepingdale Diversion
After a good night's sleep, you search out the bargemistress, Oristel. She's somewhere in her late thirties, with a plain face heavily tanned and weathered, and an infectious grin. When you explain what you want, she shakes her head and laughs. "Take you down to Deepingdale and back? Well, if you're paying, I suppose we could make the trip. It beats sitting around drinking." Her eyes twinkle. "If you don't have cold weather gear, buy it now. The wind bites to the bone."
You spend the rest of the day stocking up for the trip, including buying warmer clothing for those of you who don't have it. The following dawn you meet Oristel and her crew just south of the river ford.
When people said the word "barge," the image it summoned for many of you was a crude platform of logs lashed together. Oristel's craft is something very different. Eighty feet long, fifteen feet wide, it has a flat bottom, almost vertical sides a little less than three feet tall, and a mast with a large sail just now being unfurled.
"Come on then," Oristel calls, waving you in. The wind whips strands of her hair across her face and she tucks them up into her fur hat. "Ready when you are."
The barge is floating high in the water, mostly empty save for a couple dozen casks and sacks piled along the center line. Orisel's crew is made up of twelve dalesmen and women, and once you climb aboard they drop the sail, pull up the anchor, and set off down the Ashaba.
The journey is every bit as cold and boring as Oristel warned you. Winter sets in in earnest as you sail south with the current. Snow flurries send flakes into your eyes. For two days it warms up enough for the clouds to pour an unending stream of bitter rain on you. The crew rigs a tarp over the back half of the barge which provides at least some relief.
Sailing with the wind and current the barge makes forty miles a day. Each evening the crew beaches the craft, pitches tents, and builds a fire to cook both evenfeast and the food for the next day. Despite grumbles about the weather, there's a calm to the crew. They clearly know the river and the camping spots along it.
After a few days the Ashaba is joined by another river from the west. "That's the Semberflow," Oristel tells you. "Follow it and you'll reach Lake Sember and Semberholme. What's left of it after the Retreat, at any rate. The elves don't let us sail there."
A few hours later the Ashaba merges with a different river coming from the south. The combined river flows east. "That way is the Pool of Yeven, and eventually Featherdale. Not where we're going today. Now the hard work begins."
The crew removes pieces of wood that had been lashed into the hull and lifts long oars from brackets on the hull. The twelve men and women sit down on benches whose spacing suddenly makes sense, run out the oars, and begin to pull.
The journey slows. Whereas before you'd been making forty miles a day, now you're making about ten. The Glaemril, as Oristel calls it, is a smaller, gentler river than the Ashaba. It's not fighting you particularly hard, but it certainly isn't helping. Some of you begin taking turns at the oars, both to feel useful and as a way to warm up.
After about three days of hard rowing, the barge leaves the southern edge of Cormanthor. The deep forest retreats and ahead of you stretches the wide, rolling plains of Deepingdale. Unlike Mistledale trees are more frequent; small copses are visible dotting the plains everywhere you look.
The barge crawls on for another four days, heading fairly consistently southwest before gradually turning almost due west and disappearing into a more southerly branch of Cormanthor. As soon as the barge is under the trees Oristel guides it onto the south bank. "This is it," Oristel says. "Highmoon is a day's walk south along the edge of the forest. We've got a friend coming with a wagon, and will be heading there once they arrive. You're welcome to come with us; we'll be ready to return in a few days."
Talathel, looking better than he has in days, jumps ashore and looks around. "Home is to the west. Come, I will show you."
Everyone who goes with Talathel
For two days you follow Talathel deep into the forest. The trees are thick, the undergrowth plentiful, and several of you are soon totally lost. Talathel knows every tree and trail, however, and you move surely and quickly in his wake.
On the morning of the third day someone calls to you in elven. For a moment you're totally unable to see where the voice is coming from, and then someone drops down from the branches of a nearby duskwood. Throwing back his hood, a moon elven man embraces Talathel and quickly begins questioning him in elven. Haltingly, the ranger responds. Eventually the other elf nods and turns towards you.
"Thank you for bringing Talathel home safely to us. Myth Drannor is out nightmare, the sword hanging over our heads. To have it thrust upon you unexpected must have been terrible. Solonor must have smiled on you, to see you safely out of the ruins."
Talathel turns and bows to you. "Aye. Thank you. I am ashamed by what the city did to me, and very grateful for what you've done. I will leave you here. Bristar, my home, does not welcome visitors." He smiles sadly. "We have a small piece of the world, and wish to hold onto it. But if you need me, we have friends in Highmoon that can send word."
The two elves turn and disappear into the woods, heading west. Dorian, who had been watching carefully, leads you back to the east. It's not quite as easy as Talathel made it look, but he's entirely confident of where he's going.
That night, as you sit around a campfire made from fallen wood and watch snowflakes fighting their way through the canopy, another elf comes out of the forest. She's young, still several decades away from adulthood, and unlike Talathel or the other tree scout is unarmed aside from a belt dagger.
"H...hello." She's shivering slightly despite a thick coat. "You're the people who rescued Talathel, yes? My name is Ciyradyl. I want to ask your help."
She sits down on a fallen log and as she turns to face the campfire you can see that there are tears sliding slowly down her cheeks. "My sister, Syndra, is one of our scouts. Last summer, she joined a group of humans going to Myth Drannor. She said she'd be back by winter, but she never came home. Everyone says she's dead, but she's not! I swear by the Seldarine she's alive. I can feel it. But no one at home will do anything, and if I went to Myth Drannor I'd be eaten before I could clap twice. Please. You saved Talathel. Can you save my sister?"
She looks at you, begging.
((ooc: This is the downtime side jaunt to Deepingdale, including your in character hook for going back to the ruins. Feel free to respond to/question Syndra. Also let me know if you want to do anything else along the journey, like talk with the barge crew or take a trip to Highmoon. Once everyone's done I'll give a wrap-up post for the trip north and lock the thread.))
