Neverwinter Forest A Thief in the Night

Tag can be just for ref!

Except it wasn't night. It was the middle of the damn day, going through the chapter titles of the Hobbit deemed that was to be.  The last couple  of days had been rather chilly and damp, but that was to be expected.  It was slowly drifting towards winter after all.  Mal had also gone and finished repairing a few of the patchier bits of border but he was relatively happy with how it was now.

Well, as happy as a guy could be who still felt like people were out to do no good at every turn, but so far he'd found a grand total of one wolf who seemed like they maybe gave a damn, AKA @Cèilidhh, but if she wandered off like everyone else in his life, he wouldn't be surprised.  Perhaps he was just accepting the fact that apparently his role in life was to be alone, hated, and all that nonsense, for no reason he could discern.  He tried.  He had certainly tried.  He wasn't giving up quite yet.

The world outside seemed pretty empty right now.  He was shaded under the low boughs of one of the pines and nothing seemed to be moving beyond his territory.  To a certain point, he was thankful.  It meant nobody was coming to cause problems today.  Yet at the same time, how would he recruit if he had to stay here to protect the territory from whatever bad neighbors felt like showing up today?  Mal was uncertain to the solution of that puzzle, and he moved on, keeping an ear turned inward and his eyes outward.

On her next trip to the wilderness beyond the Barrier mountains, Wraen chose a different route, so that there was plenty of distance between her and Moonspear. She could easily imagine them being more defensive of the hunting grounds that bordered directly with their claim in the mountains, and had no wish to cause problems because of that. Along her way she stopped briefly in sentinels, to see, how the forest was faring during the late weeks of autumn, then scavenged for a while in the Stavanger bay that laid empty and unclaimed. Finally, in order to hide from the winds and waves that were becoming stronger as the day went on, she turned southwards.

This is, how she arrived at the fringes of the Neverwinter forest. Never during her stay in the wilds had this place been claimed by anyone, therefore she was very surprised to find out fresh scent markings along the line. What she found more peculiar, after walking by and studying them for a moment, was that it was a smell of one wolf only. Kingdom of a single king and warrior. How interesting. Amused by this thought, she sat down and began to plan her route back home anew.

Thanks for saving it!

He wove to the edge of the trees, then back into the shadows of their branches as he continued along his patrol.  No trespassers.  No news.  It probably could have continued along like any other non-noteworthy day until he spotted a grey figure farther along the line.  Wait.. Was that someone just sitting at the borders?  Next to, really.  Close enough that bad memories (let alone duty) demanded he do something.  He slipped forward to investigate, moving swiftly between familiar trees, slowing as he got closer so that he could take a look, perhaps before being noticed.  

At the very least he was pretty sure she wasn't from either Nightwalkers or Moonspear.  Someone else.  Hopefully someone farther away so if she was the bearer of trouble, he wouldn't be blessed by it.  That didn't mean he wasn't going to be cautious, though.  Still.  Why was she just sitting there?  He made a final approach, but kept to his side of the line.  Can I help you?  Though his words probably held those "um, what the heck r u doin there" undertones because he was blunt, not a silver-tongued politician.  Give him time, he might learn something one of these days.

Mal might not have been educated in diplomacy much, but his approach and inquiry was deemed polite enough, for Wraen to greet him with just as much politeness and kindness she would have shown to a curious stranger on her own door-step. He was young, he seemed a little rugged and weather-worn and he had the most unusual look she had ever seen. Her imagination was quick to add elven qualities to the man and even before their conversation had begun, she was inclined for it to be a pleasant one.

"The last I was here - this forest was not yet claimed, so I wanted to see, who is the proud owner of the place," she explained in her usually playful way. "I am Wraen of Firebirds, I live just beyond that mountain range," she introduced herself and, as she mentioned her home, she beckoned to a non-specific place in the general direction of her home. "What is your name?"

If Mal was at all elven, he was certainly one that had been too far away from more civilized kingdoms for a bit too long.  He'd probably stopped going more feral (for now) but it'd take a while for him to figure out what was more expected unless someone went out of their way to tell him directly. He wasn't used to being treated reasonably, even now.  Certainly not by another pack wolf -- thus far the majority of his interactions hadn't exactly gone well. It caused him to metaphorically back off a little bit from his normally spiky self.  His response was almost in good humor.  Well, I claimed it like six months ago or so.  Been a while since you've been this way?  Okay, maybe it was slightly closer to five?  Maybe it was actually six now.  Time, how does it work?

He looked where she was indicating.  He wondered briefly if the earthquakes traveled to the other side of mountains -- he hadn't left this general vicinity since they started.  Looking back to Wraen, he replied, I'm Mal.  I never even went to those mountains, let alone beyond them.  Hope things aren't as screwed up there as they are here.  If the prey was plentiful on the other side of the mountains and certain neighbors here felt like throwing a fit, the path of least resistance might be to bail somewhere else.  With winter around the corner, they kinda needed some food.  Even with a smaller number of wolves, they'd probably eat the forest out of small prey eventually.

"That is true - I usually haunt the shores and the immediate vicinity of Moonspear. Got to keep those mountain dwellers on edge," Wraen joked light-heartedly, though the possibility that she would get taken down and eaten, if she in all seriousness bothered Hydra and her kin, was very high. Still - it was amusing to think about herself as a huge threat to the old empire.

"Mal, it is nice to make your acquaintance," Wraen dipped her muzzle politely in response. "I can't say, what is the extent of "screwed" here, but we have suffered from some quakes and food shortage over there as well," she spoke freely. "But since that part of valley is shared between two packs, the competition is not that fierce," she added. "So - are you a one-army man here? I did not catch smells of anyone else here," Wraen asked.

You have to have some trick for that -- you're not full of holes and they seem to be on-edge just from other wolves existing.  Though it was possible he maybe was joking a bit more than being serious depending on what happens in certain backdated threads.  Still, it was unlikely that they would have totally changed his opinion that they seemed to believe their mountain gave them divine rights to be obnoxious to everyone else on the planet or something along those lines.

Either way she had some news that wasn't what he'd wanted to hear.  Maybe it would be an option if he was absolutely forced but then they'd have to relearn a new area and deal with that nonsense.  Probably pretty similar here, then.  Except with a lot of people nearby with bad attitudes.  Was the best thing really to just wait?  Would things come back?  It wasn't like he'd had tons of experience with this kind of thing.  Anyway, the numbers question was much easier to answer, There are a few of us.  There were more but then some went missing during the quakes.  And then the one who went out searching also hasn't returned... He shrugged, Staying put is sounding like a much better idea.  Certainly he couldn't send the remainder out if they were going to end up vanishing too.  At some point, the risks were too high, and they were on their own.

Wraen furrowed her brow, because she did not fully understand the intended joke about "having holes", but, since she was not too sure, if she wanted to know, what it was, she did not press for an explanation. And understanding smile gave way to the earlier confusion, when Mal spoke about, how the prey-situation here was not much better here than anywhere else. Had he spoken about Moonspear's general attitude to their place on this Earth, she would have admitted whole-heartedly and even joked about it too.

"Yeah, we among our group had also some discussion about, what would be better - staying or moving elsewhere in the hopes that the grass is greener and there is more food," Wraen still did not know the right answer to this question, likely she would never find out either. You could make that kind of judgements only months, even years later. In the present - there was no way of knowing, if anything would make things to improve.

"What about those people with bad attitudes - what kind of trouble have they been giving to you?" she asked. "Do they belong to the known neighbours or are they random a-holes?"

Mal had really wanted to go back to the way things were the first four or five months he was here.  People left him alone, all was well, there were deer...  He'd happily keep this iteration of the membership, though.

Mal also wasn't very good at reading subtle confusion or figuring out what that might have been directed at, so he just moved right on to her question, They're neighbors, yeah.  Moonspear thinks they own everything, even stuff this far from whichever one of those is their mountain.  He sort of vaguely motioned towards the range in the distance.  It had never been made clear to him and honestly, he didn't care, as he wasn't planning to go over there.  Like five of them trespassed, took a rabbit, then accused me of stealing.  Shall we say the fact he thought they were crazy was obvious?  None of it made sense.  His forest was at least a couple days travel if they weren't flat out sprinting for the whole time.  But hey, apparently the dumb Moonspear wolves believed that wasting all that energy for not enough food to feed all of them.  Weirdos.  Nightwalkers.. They're just not very smart, seemed like.  They showed up here, called for me, then started talking about how they were gonna steal something. Eye roll.  Seems like it would have been a lot smarter to do that in the opposite order if they were really up to no good.  There's more, but not as like.. offensive as those.  Rusalka seemed like it just had one particularly dumb wolf a fair distance up the hierarchy.  That seemed more likely to be fixable than the others.

"That sounds exactly like Moonspear," Wraen laughed, when Mal retold his encounter with the hunters of Hydra. Funny, how one leader's personality could seep into every fibre of the pack as a whole. But then again, why should she be surprised. Charon was the patriarch and had fathered almost all of the current inhabitants of the mountain. They had been raised to be proud and with a belief that the world owed them something.

"Nightwalkers - that's a pack that I have not yet heard of," Wraen noted, though she had to admit - the choice of the name was very interesting. You did not know, who they were yet, but the slogan already gave you chills. "Do you know, which lands they have claimed?" she asked out of curiosity, because she did not wish to have any fierce competitors on her side of the mountains.

There was a perk of Mal's ears at her response.  That much of a reputation for that pack, eh?  In the end, Mal took it more seriously, probably because it apparently was more of a direct shadow on his pack than wherever hers was, I'm surprised nobody's chewed the ego out of them. They deserve it.  It's not like we're really bothering them this far away.

Moving on... Not specifically.  They said some forest south of here -- I don't think it's very close, their scents didn't seem to match those like a day's travel away.  If all their members are like the two that showed up here, they're either gonna have everyone wanting 'em gone or they'll make themselves that way.  I'm pretty much expecting some Nightwalker representative to show up here and be all, 'Oh you wanna live here? Well give us food and we'll go away and not bite your ears off,' kind of thing.  Distance should protect them.  Or at least if either pack showed up to try to fight them, they would obviously be in the wrong versus Mal, who would just be defending his home.  He'd rather just rocks fall on their heads and save him trouble.  If they'd let me know way earlier the were garbage maybe I'd have picked somewhere else, but it's way too late for that.  Now, he wanted to stay out of spite.  Well, that and he was happy with the forest, but when it came to bad neighbors, definitely some spite.

"They are tough as old moose's hide. You are more likely to lose your teeth than cause an actual damage," Wraen remarked, feeling entertained by such open and unabridged opinion of the proud Moonspear wolves. They would not care about being talked about behind their backs, it would not even occur to them in the first place, which made this all the more amusing.

"They do sound like a proper nuisance," she nodded, wondering now, which southern forest it was and felt glad that it was located far enough from Firebirds to make her actually worry. There was always a possibility that, if they had come as far as Neverwinter forest, it would not deter them to go in any other direction they desired. If shortage of food persisted longer, wolves wandering far from their actual home would be no surprise. Just look at her now.

"I understand that you were not born here, but where do you come originally?" Wraen asked to change the subject to a - hopefully - more positive topic.

Pretty sure you can eat a moose though, that's at least useful.  Moonspear was a plague, as far as he could tell.  He'd laugh the day they fell and lost a crown or two.  It'd be damn glorious.  Wraen had pretty well covered the Nightwalkers.  Nuisances.

His history?  Well, not exactly a thing that he liked to discuss too much, but at least the early days were okay, as far as he could recall.  If it didn't progress too much farther towards the present, wouldn't be too bad... I was born uh.  North?  Northeast?  It was pretty far, and they moved us when I was pretty small so I don't know exactly..  Bracken Sanctuary. Pause.  Well, shoulda been 'us,' was just 'me' for a while.  Somewhere over the other mountains.  Vague nod in that easternish direction.  I'm not going back over there any time soon to find out.  Too many bad memories, too many people he didn't want to meet again (even if he didn't know they were gone).

"True," Wraen nodded in agreement. Even if Moonspearans were a box of chocolate candies you would never find one with a sweet filling. But, what would be life without contrasts and complexities. From a storyteller's point of view, it was good to have such neighbours and enjoy the chance to watch them the same way first colonists observed the strange rituals of natives in the Amazonian jungle.

Mal's history was like a puzzle - half-scrambled, half-put together. For him the image was crystal clear, Wraen could not piece the whole tale together, but she respected the young man's rights not to pour his heart out to a complete stranger and did not press for more details. Bracken Sanctuary was not a familiar name and, if the boy had moved away, while young, it was just as possible that the pack no longer existed. 

"That's totally fine. You are a grown up person and I feel that you have great plans for your future," she told him. "Do not let any nuisances or moose hides deter you," she gave another sincere stroke for his ego.

Yeah, there was a certain part of Mal that was pretty easy to win over with praise.  Wraen wasn't totally pushing that button, but it was close enough he'd quite happily accept someone saying he wasn't a walking disaster. He smugly tipped his head up a bit as he replied, It will be great. And the doubters are free to keep thinking that as long as they forget I exist, and ended with a rather devious smirk.  People were good at forgetting him.  Might as well use it to an advantage, right?  For once.  Then it'd be way too late for them to do anything about it unless they really wanted to take some risks.

Seemed like they were maybe out of questions pointed at him.  But that did make his brain loop back around to ask her one, Why're you this far from wherever your from?  It had sounded far, the pointing had been somewhat indistinct, and either way it didn't look like there was an easy way across those other mountains.  It'd be a much longer walk.

"The earthquakes and massive storms have affected our lands as much as it has here. There is slight shortage of food," Wraen explained her reasons openly enough. Hers were no news to hide, because everyone, who happened to be far away from home, was either a pack wolf seeking ways to survive or a loner, who was yet blissfully unaware of harsh conditions here. She truly pitied anyone, who had arrived here in high hopes of a better life. And not finding any such. 

"I am scouting, seeing, how other packs are doing, which lands are claimed, which are suitable hunting grounds and such," she elaborated. "So, it is good that I ran into you - I will warn my people to stay clear of your forest," she added, though if hunger became worse enough, there wouldn't be any moral or diplomatic reasons, why would she change her altruistic ways to a more aggressive approach.

So, nothing too exciting behind her trip either.  For moving, then?  It'd be even more silly for you to hunt something here and think about bringing it home than it would be for Moonspear, I'd imagine.  It had to be a distance. 

He nodded appreciatively, And I don't think you'll have to worry about my wolves wandering over to your territory any time soon, either -- several people disappeared after leaving on scouting trips, so I'm not exactly recommending people wander too far around here unless they have to. It would be a lie for him to say that he hadn't considered that maybe that was the fault of the neighboring packs.  Would they murder?  He wouldn't put it past Nightwalkers.  Moonspear and Rusalka or whatever both seemed unstable enough that he wouldn't be surprised.  As mentioned, they were all awful.

What had happened to Okeanos?

Incidentally, just as Mal mentioned multiple disappearances in combination with unfriendly neighbours, Wraen also thought about a possible involuntary demise from life. Moonspear was not above killing, but would they hunt other wolves for food? Hydra was many things, but Wraen doubted that she was a cannibal. On the other hand, desperate times called for desperate measures. She could not claim that she would not do the same thing, if the circumstances were very dire. 

"Well, with that in mind, I should probably be heading back home," Wraen told the boy and looked at the sun that had already hidden herself behind the mountain peaks, which meant that in an hour, it would be completely dark here. "It was nice talking to you and best of luck in surviving," she told the fellow and after hearing, what he had to say, began to walk home.