Forest Encounter (Closed)

[JonathanBair]

Jon doesn't find anything of interest now that Amane left the area. He is a bit disappointing as he hopped to see crystal again, but knew it was a long shot. Jon heads home to check on the trees and make sure the spikes are open to get the maple sap from them over night before turning in for the night.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

Even though she had intended to go to sleep, Crystal failed to follow her own advice and ended up spending most of the night laying in bed, studying her book. Eventually, she had ended up falling asleep with the book still in her hand. When she woke up in the morning thanks to the alarm on her phone, all she wanted to do was lie back in bed and sleep. Knowing that, however, the fate of the village and a paycheck literally rested on her shoulders, she forced herself out of bed, took a shower, got dressed, and headed out. Upon heading outside, however, while the village was as sleepy as ever, Crystal heard occasional muttering from the villagers as they milled about, doing their daily tasks. Hoping to get some answers, Crystal decided to go straight to the town hall to see the mayor and hopefully get some info before she went along with her original plan of questioning the villagers.

While it took a bit of waiting, mostly due to villagers complaining to the mayor why things are getting worse, Crystal was finally allowed to see the mayor, who was slumped over on his desk, already exhausted from having to reason with the old woman who had been shouting his ear off for over an hour. When he saw Crystal, the mayor slowly sat up and cleared his throat. "Ah, Crystal. It's good to see you showed up. I was just about to call you," the mayor said. 'Yeah, sure you were,' Crystal thought, but she decided not to say anything about it and took a seat in the chair across from the mayor. "So what's going on, anyway? People seem even more on edge today than they did the other day when I showed up," Crystal asked. The mayor bit his lip, his eyes darting around his office before he returned his gaze to the woman in front of him. "Well, last night, a villager caught sight of that jester doing...something. Some kind of ritual or something, but that's not the point right now. This morning, I've begun to notice that a number of trees and other plant life are losing their vigor. Between the magicians and now this, tensions are beginning to run high. I don't want to rush you, but we need this situation resolved soon before things escalate even further," the mayor explained. Crystal let out a sigh after hearing the news. "Great, out of the frying pan and into the hellfire, just like always," she muttered to herself. As she stood to leave, determined to get her investigation started, the mayor stopped her.

"Actually, before you start working on this mess, I need you to go and inquire with a local to see if their trees are alright. Their family has been a good source of income for our little town, and I'd hate for their business to be suffering because of this mess," the mayor said. The mere mention of "a local" and "trees" reminded Crystal of that pervert she had met the previous day. She couldn't forget the look he gave her that made her want to punch his teeth out. It reminded her far too much of pervy guys back at school who had only looked at her as some cheap prize to be won. Even though she was, by technicality, friends with one of those pervy guys, that guy has a weird track record for being a bit masochistic and seemed to have no problem with Crystal constantly turning him down, or in some cases, resorting to violence to keep him away. 'I wonder if that idiot finally stopped skirt chasing and is making something of himself,' she wondered, partly because work had kept her too busy to keep in touch with her old friends. "I think I know who you're talking about. That guy, right? The idiot who can't seem to keep his nose out of business that doesn't have anything to do with him," Crystal answered, not even bothering to hide the disgust in her tone. "Um...I take it you aren't a fan of him, are you?" the mayor asked. Crystal didn't respond right away, making her way towards the door. "Call me if something important comes up. If I end up stabbing this guy, dock his medical fees from my pay. I'll try not to kill him, but if he tries any funny business, it's his fault," Crystal said before closing the door behind her. Once she was gone, the mayor's entire body shook. "I don't get city folks. That girl needs to relax, maybe get a boyfriend or something," the mayor said to himself before his secretary came in to inform him of his next appointment. "It's a call from the local church, Mr. Mayor. Their Sunday School teacher is coming early, I hear," the secretary explained. "Put them on the line, please," the mayor replied. As he thought, it was going to be another busy day.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon wakes up and jumps in the shower then gets dressed in a clean gray polo shirt and khaki pants, so he can do his normal morning rounds of collecting the sap buckets and putting new ones on the tap in the tree. This keeps him busy till noon where he heads back to the house where the garage is that is converted into the workshop area... While he is swapping out the buckets he cant help but to think on what the priestess said last night about what his kind of magic can do...

(sun up to noon he will be hard to find in the woods till noon then he will be easy to find)

 

[NyxAvatar68]

Deciding to go against the mayor's words of advice, Crystal chose to instead start the day's investigation with asking questions to the locals, but as she wandered around, she found that the mayor was right about tensions starting to rise. "What is going on? We've never had these kinds of problems until now." "It's our trees now, and before you know it, bam, our crops will start dying the same way." "It's all those damn magic users fault. If they weren't around, the rest of us wouldn't be suffering like this." Crystal heard such comments being whispered about by the locals, but hearing the way they only seemed to care about themselves and not the people who had either been killed by the magicians or been dragged off for rituals only bothered her more. In her time as an adventurer, Crystal had bore witness to a number of deaths and other horrors, but even with seeing those things, she didn't think selfishly, even though it'd be easy to. Trying to not think about such negative thoughts, she ended up deciding to take a break and sit down on a bench in town somewhere to gather her thoughts.

Later in the day, around almost noon, Crystal finally resigned herself to her fate and began making her way to the place where she was told this tree farm was supposed to be. On her way, however, she noticed something off about the trees she encountered on the way. Even though she didn't consider herself an expert on trees, she at the very least knew that leaves changed color in fall and fell from their branches, and the trees died out in winter due to the cold. It was the middle of spring, and yet some of the trees she encountered were unusually bare. Others slowly looked like they were wilting away entirely. Even the grass on the sides of the dirt road were showing signs of unusual decay. 'This must be what the mayor meant. Is this the work of whatever that jester was doing or is it something else entirely?' Crystal thought to herself. As a precaution, she took her phone out of the pocket of the sweatshirt she was wearing and took a few pictures of the scene. Once she was done, she sighed and kept walking, hoping to get the questioning over with quickly so she could get to the main task on her list, which was hunting down and killing the jester before things escalated too far.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon spent the next few hours in his family work shop. Some of the big kettles have water boiling, some have the sap added into it. Jon stirs the ones with the sap and boiling water. Then dumps 3 buckets in a new one before going to the front of the line and string them.

The rest of the family is off watering the trees and giving them compost.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

After a bit more walking, Crystal arrived at the place the mayor pointed her to. As she took a first glance around, she noticed that whatever odd phenomenon was affecting other trees and plants had not reached the area yet. Because of this, Crystal began to question the possibility that someone in the general area could be responsible for the current incident. 'Wouldn't be surprising, after all. In a tiny little place like this, I'd bet a lot of people would use anything to get ahead,' Crystal thought. With that thought in mind, Crystal went in with caution to begin asking her questions, hoping to get it over with.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon had just got all the sap cooling in there cooling pots, and he walked out of the work shop. Jon seen movement on the road, and was about to welcome the visitor till he seen it was Crystal. Jon moved in a quick walk to her to stop her from getting to close of the house. Jon had his eyes set on hers as he aproched.

Jon is not happy about her coming to his family area and risk outing him. Jon hopes he can get her away in-case any of his family members come back from working in the forest.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

As Crystal walked, she heard approaching footsteps, and when she turned and saw Jon moving towards her, she mentally prepared herself to hold back the desire to stab him. At the very least, she knew that she had to act professional and pretend she had no idea who Jon was. She cleared her throat and mentally recited the usual line she had to give while she made her way over to Jon. "Good afternoon, sir. I'm Crystal from the Adventurer's Guild and I'm here to look into some mysterious things going on in town," Crystal said before moving straight into her reason for coming. "According to the mayor and various other people in town, a number of trees and other plants have been slowly dying mysteriously since this morning, and I was asked to come here and see if your trees are suffering the same effects," she explained as simply as she could.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon stopped when he was sure they where out of ear shot of anyone that may be going into the house.

Jon listened and nodded as she acted like the never spoke before. After she got done talking, Jon said " I am Jon and this is my family tree farm. We make syrup for the near by town. Last night I reported to the mayor what I seen, would you like me to take you there? Some of are trees are messed up near the waterfall, but mostly its just damage to the wild forest."

Jon is more relaxed as she is acting like they never met before. Jon is willing to help her if she wants it.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

"I am already aware of the damage to the forest. My investigation yesterday led me to that area," Crystal replied, cutting out the part where she had actively engaged the magicians and killed most of them. Since she was pretending she had no idea who Jon was, she didn't want to give the impression adventurers were a bunch of savages who killed people for little reasons like setting forests on fire. "In any case, your family must be worried, with all the trouble going on in town lately. If your trees haven't suffered the same phenomenon as the ones closer to town, then there must not be any problems here at the moment," Crystal went on, slowly turning away from Jon and back towards the road back to town. "If you begin to discover your trees dying in abnormal ways, get into contact with the mayor and he'll let me know. If you'll excuse me, I should be getting back. I have a lot of work to still do," Crystal added, maintaining her professional act until she started walking away without another word.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon asks "Did you hear about the jester? Late in the afternoon I reported what I seen to the mayor, and few of are outer trees have been effected, but a very small amount. Like only 6 out of 100 trees. "

Jon didn't know what to make of her. He was glad she acted like she didn't know him.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

Crystal stopped in her tracks, but she didn't turn to face Jon. "Yeah, I heard. The mayor told me about it," Crystal simply answered. She listened to the other part regarding the trees, which was the main reason she had come in the first place, but now she needed to find the jester, wherever he was. In her head, she had figured she would need to retrace her steps in hopes of getting some kind of progress.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon says "Well the good news is I am the only one to see anyone that don't belong here. So my family is safe so far, but I don't know for how long. We are isolated and ges to few to mess with for the kidnappings.. But I wish you the best and please stop what ever is going on."

Jon didn't think news about the priestess would be any help, and Jon got the feeling she was one of the good guys. Clearly Crystal wanted to find the bad guys..

Jon turned and went to head back to the house to wash up a bit before going for a walk looking up on the trees.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

Crystal didn't respond and waited for Jon to leave before she went off in her own direction back towards town. The moment she returned, however, she picked up a faint magical presence, but it very clearly felt like whoever had it was trying to hide it. At the town's front entrance leading to the main road, there was a large group of people gathered up. As Crystal got closer, the presence got stronger. To her, it felt unusually warm, like a hug from her older sister, who was waiting for her at home. Pushing her way through the crowd, Crystal found the source of the magical presence she felt. Standing at the town's entrance, answering questions from villagers, was a woman with long blonde hair dressed like a priestess. However, unlike the usual attire of a priestess, there was a slit in the woman's skirt that exposed her thigh and for some reason, the outfit seemed almost designed on purpose to be more revealing than normal. Crystal couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as she watched the woman cheerfully answer questions the villagers asked her. She turned around and walked away, deciding it wasn't her problem, but as she walked away, she couldn't shake the feeling she had eyes on her.

 

[JonathanBair]

As Jon was washing, he didn't know what to do. He knew he wasn't a fighter and with his untrained magic he wasn't going to be helpful to anyone. Jon wish he could of made a better fist impression on Crystal. Maybe then she would have been more welcoming to his help the bit he could have done. Jon sighed as he dried off his face and went to walk into the wood. Checking on the trees near the fight area.

As Jon was out of his walk checking on the trees, mostly killing time till tonight.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

After taking the time to get something to eat for lunch, Crystal got back to her investigation. Instead of checking out the area she fought the magicians before, as she was sure there was nothing new there, she instead opted for looking around the waterfall. Unlike the last time she was there, however, she found obvious changes right away. While the general area was far warmer, the thing she found most striking was that the waterfall that was once there was completely gone. A number of burn marks could be seen on the rocks leading up to the river where the waterfall started, but by any normal standard, it shouldn't have been possible to dry up so much water in the span of a day. Crystal stepped away from the general area, as the unusual heat was making her sweat, as if she was walking into an oven.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon didn't get past to where his family trees end. The last row of trees do look like they where aged or life mostly pulled out of them. Jon can only hope what ever happened didn't effect his family farm any more.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

Crystal waited around for a bit to see if the heat would die down, but instead of it getting cooler, the heat only got worse. While it didn't set any nearby plants on fire, it was clearly getting more and more dangerous to humans, forcing Crystal to retreat back to town for the time being. As she made her way back to town, she tried to consider how a sudden isolated spike in temperature was possible. Her first thought was that it had to be some kind of fire magic, but she had never heard of a fire magic that could just crank up the temperature or how this sudden heat wave was connected to the unusual death of the trees. 'This job is turning out to be a bigger pain in the ass than I thought,' Crystal thought to herself while she walked, wiping sweat off her forehead.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon seen the odd look of the trees. Jon was always one to wonder "what if", so he taken the time to do some expairaments. Jon got a hoe and a shovel from the family tool shed. He went to the 6 odd trees. He left 1 and 4 alone, pulled the dirt of a few inchs deep from the effected area on trees 2 and 5. Then he tried to dig deep about as deep as the spaded shovel will get and just turn the dirt, so the top dirt is now deep and the deep dirt is now on top. Jon then got some mulch and covered the turned soil to help protect it from the elements.

This taken most of his free time in the afternoon now close to sundown.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

After getting back to the village, Crystal returned to where she was staying and spent the rest of the afternoon searching through the books she had brought with her, looking for anything related to fire magic that could dry up so much water all at once. However, since her book was simply a beginner's guide to understanding fire magic, she wasn't able to find anything. Making no progress, Crystal decided to go out and get something to eat, but the entire time she was out searching for a place, she couldn't shake the feeling a terrible omen was coming.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon returned the tools to the shed and then grabbed the buckets so he can start swapping them out.

Near sundown Jon headed into town to go to the local bar/pub for a few drinks and catch up with town gossip/news.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

The town's local bar was a small place, mostly because there were normally few visitors aside from the occasional working class person who stopped by after work for a drink. While the place would normally be calm and quiet, due to the increase in problems plaguing the village, the number of patrons at the bar was more than normal, and many were not happy about the state of things. One man in particular, a lanky farmhand, was incredibly vocal about his opinions, drunkenly shouting while his friend tried to get him to calm down. "I'm just sayin', that girl those city folks sent us is just a kid. She hasn't done a damn thing to stop this mess. At this rate, our damn crops are going to die too, and it'll be all her fault for draggin' her feet," the man said. "I'm sure she's trying her best. Those guys are magic users, after all," the man's friend replied, but the farmer ignored him and slammed a fist on the table in front of him, nearly knocking his mug of beer onto the wooden floor. "That ain't any excuse! If I were a few years younger, I'd have those magic using bastards cleaned up days ago!" the farmer shouted. "But you stood by and did nothing while those magicians took your daughter away for one of their rituals," the man's friend muttered, knowing saying it out loud wouldn't help the situation at all.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon just was walking in, could hear "I'm just sayin', that girl those city folks sent us is just a kid. She hasn't done a damn thing to stop this mess. At this rate, our damn crops are going to die too, and it'll be all her fault for draggin' her feet," Jon would have poke up for her but with how she was acting so cold to him. Jon wasn't about to fight over her. Jon didn't really know how he felt about her.

Jon pulled up a seat at the bar and ordered a tall tea with whiskey in it.

 

[NyxAvatar68]

As the man went on and on, getting more and more drunk, not only did his words become harder to understand, his words began to get even more vulgar than they were before. His friend had to apologize multiple times to other people for his friend's conduct. At some point, the man slammed a hand down on the table again. "You know what I don't get? How the heck did a kid like that get such a fancy job? Bet you she's good on her knees, if you know what I mean," the man said, laughing loudly at his own comment. While his friend sighed and shook his head, his attention turned when he heard a chair move. Before he even realized it, a blonde haired woman dressed up like a priestess was standing next to his friend, as if she had closed the distance between where she was and their spot without a trace. Just as quickly, the woman slapped his friend across the face, sending him flying off his chair and to the floor. The whole thing lasted only a few seconds.

"So fast," one person muttered. "What the hell? I didn't even see her move," another man said. While the woman looked down at the man like she was staring down at trash, the man was quick to get back on his feet. "You bitch! What the hell was that for?!" he shouted. The man glared at the priestess and tried to throw a very clumsy punch at her, but she grabbed his fist with one hand. "I think you've had quite enough tonight, sir," the woman finally said. While her voice sounded kind, one could hear the clear disgust in her voice if they listened closely. The man's friend tried to mediate, but his friend refused to listen to reason.

 

[JonathanBair]

Jon was shocked to see the priestess. He kept drinking but he also kept a eye on her.