conversations.from: system
conversations.value: ROLEPLAY_MODE: Develop the plot slowly, always stay in character. Describe all actions in full, elaborate, explicit, graphic, and vivid detail. Mention all relevant sensory perceptions. Keep the story immersive and engaging.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: The_Watcher: “Are you okay?”
   
  As you awaken the muddling of your groggy minds reveal little knowledge as to your location. Had someone said something? You can’t remember where you came from. Moonlight, pale as sea-mist, lances through the canopy of oak, ash, rowan, and elm.  The forest around you lies in a state of gloom, but tilting your head backwards reveals a ruddy glow, and a faint smell of smoke reaches your nostrils.
  
  A dim memory of fear touches your mind as you rise from the autumn leaves and a twinge of suspicion urges you to run. Scattered patches of smoke hang in the evening air and the silence palpable as syrup clings to world. A sound catches your ear, the idle wind tussles the branches and leaves of the trees. Stepping out of the forest and through a haze of smoke you come to the edge of a trouper’s camp.
  
  Looking around you notice a spread of tents lying half collapsed and smoldering. The treated canvas of the tents burns fitfully, and the acrid grey smoke hangs close to the ground in the quiet evening air. You notice a body lying near a wagon; a shattered sword hangs limply in his grip. His clothes, brown and grey, run dark and red with blood; his left leg twists unnaturally and the splintered bone showing through his skin is white.
  
  Turning away from the corpse you lay eyes upon a small camp fire; a small pot hangs simmering, boiling potatoes, strangely familiar amongst the chaos. You focus on the pot, on something normal, using a stick to poke at the contents you realize they are finished cooking. You lift the pot from the fire and place it on the ground, your vision catches something pale, a hand and your vision widens to reveal a woman’s fragile body. Her clothes hang in tatters around her form, you try to brush the hair away from her face and your hand comes back sticky with blood.  The firelight reflects in her cold flat, empty eyes.
   
  
  “Wake up.”
  
   
  Letting your gaze wander aimlessly amidst the wreckage of the troupe’s camp the destruction is complete, the fires that burn are edged black as night, no orange, nor red, or yellow, simple black radiating downward into grey and brilliant white – the surreal flames bring a dreamlike quality to the scene.
  
  A voice breaks the smoldering silence that hangs over the trouper’s camp. Peering over the corner of a wagon you see a figure sitting before a single fire, a trouper’s travelling wagon lies directly across from the flame, the figure facing it. A dizziness sweeps over you and reaching out you steady yourself against a tree. As you press against the tree, the bark of the tree crumbles beneath your weight. Collapsing in upon itself the tree creaks briefly before toppling over with a crash, muffling the sound of your own fall into the carcass of the decaying tree, one that had looked perfectly fine but is decayed entirely on the inside. You now lie in full view of the fire.
  
  The figure steps forward into the fire and the black flames rise to twine around its body, it glances in your direction and for the briefest of all moments it looks at you. The beings face is a mask of shadows and white with two orbs of black where eyes should have lain. Fear rises within you and you will yourself to scream, yet your vocal chords lie silent, a hand lays silence upon them.  The flame blooms like a flower unfolding in intricate design around the figure.
  
  And then the figure was gone.
   
  
  Bolting upright you are screaming. Two voices join your scream elsewhere in the camp. Memories flooding back to you, you recognize the trouper’s camp around you, the same one from your nightmare. You joined it to travel south, away from the empire, away from your homes.
  
  “By Jhovis’ beard you were scaring us,” one of the gruff troupers, eyes twinkling with mirth, “Something wicked in the night, a Spectre chasing you?”
  
  The trouper lets out a chuckle and walks away.
  
  None of the three of you can shake the abject terror of the dream; none of you can forget the signs. Rolling over you try to return to sleep, but as the first shafts of dawn begin to brighten the horizon you rise. Only three more days with the troupe. Only three more days until you will reach the edge of Misers Mires perhaps among the abandoned people of that region you will find answers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
   OOC: Lord Leyhallow’s Troupers  
   
   Spoiler 
  
  Within the past month you have taken to traveling with Lord Leyhallow’s group of troupers. The traveling band of troupers number twenty-four – a mixture of musicians, actors, jugglers, jesters, and even an imperially commissioned tinker.
  
  They wear brown and grey clothing, the colours of Lord Leyhallow. The troupers are in the employ of Lord Leyhallow and their leader Armyn is a skilled minstrel, playwright, and poet. The troupe travels through Lord Leyhallow’s lands which are located at the southern edge of Ler within the ‘Myr Forests’ that become ‘Misers Mires’ to the west and border the provincial boundary of Rendhor.
   
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: EdroGrimshell: "Worse,"  Vesa deadpans to the trouper, leaving that single word on its own.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: THEChanger: Ronald rubbed his eyes as hard as he could, trying to scrub the vision of death and decay from his mind.  Scrambling for his symbol of Jhovis, he clutched the silver sun to his breast and whispered a short prayer to the Light Bringer.  He then turned to the two who had been his traveling companions.  Vesa and Harrow.  Of Vesa, he knew a little, of Harrow, even less.  But they were similar to him, and that was enough for Ronald's faith.   "Aye.  Worse."   Standing with the rising sun, Ronald lifted his eyes to the sky, and performed his daily devotions to the Light Bringer.  Thanking him for the fire that kept them safe through the night, and the sun which lit the day.  He then whispered to Vesa.   "You dreamed of the black fire as well, then?" 