The young Elf man introduces himself as Earamin- like Jiri, a childhood refugee from the Elven Mountain Kingdom.  Jiri and Earamin quickly decide this isn't the best place to talk- it will rapidly become the news of the town, and as Earamin says, "this is the sort of thing that should be quiet, at least at the start.  We haven't many supporters."

Jiri feels a little swept up in it all- she hadn't expected her simple request to visit the Flooded Forest with Nesterin and Melligast to morph so rapidly into an expedition to her homeland.  Yet... this is the opportunity her little group had said they were waiting for, a ship willing to take them.

There was something she recalled, that someone had said...The golden opportunity is never offered twice: seize, then, the hour.

They relocate to Earamin's home- small and on the edge of town.  Like Jiri, he's not well off.
He's a hunter and in the "civilized" society here that's not high on the occupational scale.

Jiri sends out her little brother to round up those she and Earamin know would help, and finds a map of the region.


 
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:37, Sun 03 Jan 2021.

The Call of the Mountains was something that her "mother" had discussed many times when Oda was a child. Although she never understood all of what her mother disccussed, what Oda did know is what she could intuit from the experiences she had that these moments with her mother where different. It was within these moments, while her mother was recounting her pain and loss that Oda was able to get closer to her mother's truth (and not just run against the polished performance she often adopted on Oda's behalf). It was in the shadow of her conversation about the Call of the Mountains that a great weight of gravitas would settle about her mother and her eyes would disengage with the present and peirce the past to relive the comfort of Mount Ethuil.


Now that she was an adult and her mother was gone, Oda still remembered the stories of Ethuil and while she was carving out a life for herself in this great big world, some part of her would always be her mother's little girl and would hope that a return to the elven mountain might make her mother proud.

A chance...an opportunity...a risk....perhaps a reward? Varis considered the opportunity offered and how it might affect him. All his life raised on tails of what was, living with the loss of what was and the disorder and chaos it had brought.

He started moving without thinking, first to one bookshelf, pulling a book and flipping to read a passage...a few feet down and a quick check of another book, almost unconscious as he worked on the problem in his head.

Finally taking his notes and packing them up he started walking towards the outskirts of town,making his way towards Earamin ad Jiri, moving to the future and the knowledge to come!

The DeSantos family had their own designs on the lands monopolized by the Elves, but influence required negotiations to be wagered from a position of maximum leverage in this new land.  One of many human interests who were taking advantage of the Elven call for aid, they had cut a niche out for themselves as supporters of the Mountain Elf Kingdom's reclamation.

It was for this reason that Lyssara DeSantos, ninth heir of her father's name and a skilled diplomat, found herself following the young brother of Jiri to the home of Earamin.  She had not met either of them personally, but they had apparently pulled in sufficient favor with her father (or one of his debtors) that merited Lyssara personal attendance.  It was the fate of such heirs and dilettantes to serve family ambitions; that much she had learned in her short twenty years under the family, since her father had accepted Lyssara's mother as his fourth wife.  Certainly, it was much better than the life that would have awaited her, the bastard child of a landed man and a prostitute, had she been raised in the brothel... but even if the cage was gilded, Lyssara knew that she served the ambitions of others.

As she walked to the meeting on the edge of town, Lyssara fished a bottle of perfume from the clutched purse held in her hands and brushed aside her bobbed platinum hair, dabbing at either side of her neck and fanning the ashen grey skin briefly with her open hand after stowing it away.  Her skin did not sweat even in this humid weather, a boon to her vanity from her mother's Tiefling blood, but Lyssara still tempered her gait so as to ensure she'd arrive at her best for this meeting.

Hence her surprise that the home she arrived at was a comparatively small house surrounded by the trophies of Earamin's hunts curing under open sky.  Were it not for her already pale complexion she would have blanched, feeling woefully overdressed for the type of company likely to keep such quarters, but sighed and reminded herself that whoever had called upon her family's aid had sufficient connections nonetheless to call for her at a moment's notice.  With her resolve steeled, Lyssara followed Jiri's brother past the threshold and into the view of the two elves poring over the map of their destination.

"Greetings, respectfully, from the house of DeSantos," she announced after a moment's pause in crisp, fluent Elvish.  She looked around the room, trying to hide her discomfort and concern without much success as she stood silhouetted against the light coming from outside the doorway in an unembellished maroon dress that complimented her bright crimson eyes, but likely cost more than most everything in the room.  "I am Lyssara, ninth heir of House DeSantos and am here at my father's behest.  How can I be of service?"