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Stepping into the Blackwood, only the hunters would be truly familiar with the grey-black labyrinth of skeletal branches that clawed upward towards the cold sky. Others would, for the most part, have seen it only from the fields or walls. If not for this excursion, many of this crew would likely have spent their whole lives safe within the city walls -- but a city had needs, and now, it needed the brave. Or, one might argue, the foolish, those who give up their own safety to become hunters’.

That of course brought this ramshackle crew to their present situation, likely with a bubbling of fear in the pits of their stomachs, uncertainty, and more questions than they had answers. But who else would hunt for the hunters? Who else would search for the men and women who helped put the better portion of the meat on the tables and the furs on their backs? What if they couldn’t find them? Would they join the ranks of the outcasts who were, more often than not, brushed by the strange ‘things’ that lived in the deep black wood?

Would they ever return, or would they join the ranks of those lost to the forest’s dangers?

Or worse, would they return – but changed, no longer truly themselves, with a spirit in possession of their bodies?

There were strange sounds to be heard even here, at the outskirts, soft whispers that they could only just make out, too indistinct for speech but strangely human enough to raise the hairs on the backs of their necks. There were growls that issued from deeper in, yet whose echoes seemed to reverberate off the city walls as though they were surrounded before they even set foot into the woods. Only those who entered the woods on a fairly regular basis could find this even close to ‘normal’.

Everyone knew the stories. Almost everyone knew someone who had a family member or a friend lost to the ‘things’ that existed deep in the woods. It was time to brave entrance, and they knew that they’d only be going in as far as would be considered ‘safe’, but accidents happen.

How are you feeling? What will you do?

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OOC:






The event starts with each group taking over a carefully-marked and bounded section of the forest, to thoroughly comb and hunt down. The idea is that this take no more than a week, and those who know anything about maps will be heartened, suspect it to be even less. After all, the areas marked out shouldn’t take more than two or three days to carefully criss-cross, four at most if they feel a need to turn over every stone, to climb some of the trees.

For now, you will RP in this thread -- the Swords organizing the efforts, and the Civilians helping as they can. This is open prompt RP, so you can play whatever you’d like, whether it be arguing or learning more about each other, exercising skills, or quivering in balls of fear, depending on your characters’ personality.

Whatever you play, activity will be rewarded -- for the more you post, the more likely it is that a clue will crop up in the forest, or something strange will wander its way into your path, dropped in by the Speaker of Stone account...

“Lady Skyla, will you do the honor of taking up the lead of the party? Your experience in the forest I suspect will be invaluable. He glanced towards Madelgarde and Ritmos and gestured to either side of Skyla. “One of you to either side, if we need to fight we should be well defendable this way, has anyone objections?” He asked before glancing back towards the great wood and taking a deep breath of the frosty air.

“To those of you whom have not been here before, please remember that it may not be as filled with screaming night terrors as some stories might have you believe. As my wife would say, it’s the quiet things that will kill you as often as not.”

((You may post at will <3))

Locke paused at the question; they really had little to go on except what the other hunters had told them about the missing people. It was startling really to realize how much you took some parts of life for granted. He bought meat at the market and only sometimes took note of the face of the man or woman he bought it from. It was easy enough to say he was far too caught up in his ‘pretty wife’ as was often his excuse for distraction

He gave them a brief run down of what he knew, in that moment he went briefly from smiling and friendly and quiet approachable to hard voiced, cold eyed and as stark in his details as the bare branched tree that adorned his cloak.

“If any of you know aught of those whom have vanished, now would be the time to share what you know of them, hair, eyes, best yet their coats, for if they are lacking those out here I’d say we’d be best to assume they were touched or nearly frost mad.”

“Naturally, we’ve taken most of the active hunters with us, while it might mean many of us eat yesterday’s stews again, If we see a hunter we don’t recognize then I for one shall fancy him or her one of our lost. Let us hope none of them return with glowing eyes and welcoming arms though, my Wife would never forgive me if I came back ‘someone else’!”

It was both a warning and the return of his more easy going nature. It was a terrible joke really. Especially to have made it here in the woods where they all risked that most terrible change.

“I agree.” Locke said softly watching still after the man who had vanished deeper into the woods. “But the question is which way.” He looked unsettled, frowning slightly as though he were still questioning what they had just seen.

“Stay close, stay behind me for now, if it seems that the woods become too strange, then I think we could safely judge that the Black Wood may mean to keep those whom it has taken, I have no wish at all to have aught of you join them in the mystery of the wood.”

“Skyla though, with me please.” He said giving her a careful look, it was after all too easy to wonder about what may or may not lay behind the careful bindings around her face. Did the scars that peered out at the edges mark some greater secret? Yes, it might be rude to ask, but all too easy to wonder.

“I think, regardless of what happens, we may wish to keep to pairs if we can at worst…spirits forbid that we get separated though.”

Around them, the woods seemed to groan, a creaking sigh, the whole world seemed to sway around them, the earth beneath their feet rolling like a snow slide underfoot. The trees around you seemed to link hands and shift from side to side in a grotesque mummers dance of naked grey branches. It made even Locke loose his balance, dropping to a three point stance to try and keep from falling over in the strange and suddenly shifting world.

“What on EARTH?” He demanded as the trees swayed to music that only they seemed to hear, creaking and groaning. The earth, stones and roots rising underfoot to shift you back together if any of those in the small group showed any inclination to try and run into the dancing woods.

There were strange shapes there in the trees, ghostly figures, some like men, some far too tall, strange and willowy. They swayed, dancing with the woods to the sound of creaking branches. At last, the dance slowed, the trees roots stopped shifting and turning the snow like skhal through water.

The woods around them were strange now; nowhere near where they had been that much was sure. Locke franticly unrolled his map, the look on his face after he studied if for several moments was nothing short of stricken.