Escort Mission

The caravan was already assembled outside the village, a motley crew of players was gathered around it, wielding shabby wooden spears.

The trio's appearance in the scene drew some attention, a blonde man stepping down from the carriages to greet them.

"Hello there, would you by any chance be joining this caravan as part of the guard duty?" the man politely asked.

"Indeed," Eidiri replied.

"Well, we've already assigned guards over here, so why don't you go up on ahead," the man suggested.

Hearing this, they politely thanked the man before proceeding on up ahead towards the front.

As they approached the sight of a relatively portly figure steadily came into view, the slovenly man was yelling at some of his servants.

"What do you mean there's something missing?" he yelled.

"Go get it! I don't care, find it!"

"If you don't find the box there will be consequences," he said ominously. "Guards, help him out here would you."

The two armored guards standing at his side stepped forward, grabbing at the servant's arms before proceeding to heave him off the carriage, tossing him onto the ground below.

The servant scurried of hurriedly, throwing nervous glances over his shoulder.

The guy that they would be under the employ of appeared to be one of those people, great, just great.

They took then positioned themselves on the sides of the leading carriage, Ken on the left, Edgar on the right, and Eidiri upfront.

Then they stood there a little awkwardly, waiting for the servants to finish loading the carts.

Monster meat, weapons, ores, all kinds of commodities were being loaded on.

After about a solid 10 minutes of extra waiting, the group finally set off at last.

The route they had planned out was quite different from the normal trading route, the Head Merchant stating how he had a contact who had explored it and said that it would be a quicker route to Fallrow.

"Although, this route would be slightly more dangerous," he said, "the profits would surely be worth it."

Nothing much was happening as they continued on.

There would be a tree here, another over there, oh what am I kidding it's a goddamn forest.

Not to mention the fact that Edgar and Ken were playing Ispy and saying, "I spy with my little eye, mhmm... something green," every now and then was seriously wearing away at his patience.

This was a quest, something had to happen, if nothing happened, he would probably be dying of boredom.

In hindsight that claim was dumb, it's quite a good thing nothing had happened, and Eidiri doesn't want anything to happen, it's just that he severely underestimated the toll this quest would take on his mental.

Deciding that he had to distract himself before he would go insane he decided to just write an update post on when exactly weapons would be sold and all that.

"If everything goes according to schedule, then weapons will be available for sale within a week. 2 days notice will be provided. This notice shall be standard procedure for any future sales. So while we do not have an established schedule as of right now, if you wish to make purchases of our goods, kindly pay attention to our blog posts with notifications on.

- Eidiri."

In this blog post, he also went on to provide the stats and descriptions of the weapons that were going to be sold, this was done to try to get everything sold as fast as possible.

Rather than having people look through the weapons on-site, it would save a lot of time if the customers were already familiar with them beforehand.

By the time he had finished his post, before he knew it, they had arrived at their first rest stop, the Fereling Woods.

The merchants stopped their wagons and dismounted, arranging them into a semicircle to provide a little protection in the event of an attack.

The Fereling Woods were notorious for bandit attacks as well as the odd roaming pack Emberwolves.

A guard duty was quickly established and after a quick meal, the players were assigned lots in the night guard, their jobs being to alert everyone in the event of an attack.

Nothing much occurred during the night thankfully enough and when day broke the bleary eyes players took up their positions once again and they set forth once more.

Within another day's time they would be able to get to the village.

They proceeded onwards and the monotonous motions let boredom once again set its claws in.

Suddenly, a cry for them to "Halt" rang through the trees.

Up ahead of them, was a waving person garbed in armor.

Cautiously, the players readied their weapons, preparing for some sort of sudden attack.

Taking note of this, the head merchant waved them off before calling out to the Knight, "I see a Knight of Pollock is here. If you are here then what trouble's present?" he asked.

"Bandits," the Knight replied.

"I'm Sir Arnold of Pollock, tasked here to investigate the disappearance in merchant caravans, it has been uncovered that shady dealings with the occult have taken place within these woods."

"It's advised that you go around here, at most it'll only extend your journey by 2 hours," Sir Arnold advised.

"Why thank you good sir," turning around to the rest of the caravan he yelled, "We're heading to the right. Hurry up now! We still need to get to Fallrow by dusk!"

While the rest of the caravan took this change in stride, the trio of Ken, Edgar, and Eidiri had a lot of questions.

Many doubts on this merchant quest being a simple "escort" quest began to surface, each of them privately communicating their doubts with one another.

But seeing as the rest of the caravan was already moving, they could only follow only warily, keeping a keen eye for anything suspicious.

And so they delved deeper into the forest, the sun slowly setting overhead by now, the forest looked eerie, as if it promised torturous deaths.