Rolling her eyes at Jaela's appearance, Gojar nods and sips her coffee in mild embarrassment, but refuses to show any sort of humility.  She instead mutters something about "bloody elves" and "decency" et cetera before sipping more coffee.  Clearly the Corporal's experience with elves has tainted her opinions, though the mention of "Cinnamon" does cause her to pause, mid-sip, and stare over the rim of her cup, flitting her gaze over at the walls distrustfully.<br/><br/>The comments from Myra and Merle actually give her an out from this discomfortable pause, although that 'out' is an awkward snerk of coffee as it comes out her nostrils in a chortle.  The corpsman falls up-- "easy, Corporal, you allri--" but she's silenced by swatting hands and a rough push from the officer as she smothers any further reaction.  Pallam's jest gives her an option to  raise her coffee cup once more.  "Hear, hear," she mutters, lifting the cup and truly wishing it were topped off with pure rye.  "Oh, you're all bonkers.  Would I could move these legs and join you.  But I've had enough of all that... wild out there."  She laughs once more, ending in a wistful sigh.  "No, I don't know what's in your bloody scrolls here," she waves at the pile on the table, "and I don't care to find out.  I know this, though. (https://youtu.be/1uQuwYLxF5Q)"  She levels her fingers over the table, as if she's giving casual, perhaps drunken advice to an old friend.  The moment lingers on, her gaze steadying, fixing to each of them in turn.<br/><br/>"I'm an enfeebled old fool now.  I may never walk again.  But this place-- it holds secrets.  Its darkness runs deep."  She shakes her head, fixes her gaze to Jaela.  "Your ancestors are not those who came here, elven or not.  They're... different.  The trees?  The land?  The soil's rife with it.  It seeps up from the ground."  Turning to Myrna with a sharp stare, her once-young eyes are hawkish, fierce.  "You sense it, don't you?  They say that yours have a sense, a connection, with the magics within the earth--"  to Ethan, she grits her teeth, "and you, Captain, you know how the war was here.  None of us were home.  Not them, not us-- none of us could ever really call this land 'ours', could we?  Will we ever?"  To Tessa-- "the powers you<i>think</i>you harness, can you really trust them out there?  Among those bleak forests where the mists never die?"  And finally resting her eyes on Pallam-- "And you... do you feel it already?  That emptiness... that ever-growing distance in between you and your god?"<br/><br/>A flock of birds flutters over the fortress, great wings gliding, their beaks as one pointed southward.  A few arrows fly up, a leaner, faster flock, and pass through them.  Three tumble from the sky in rippling bursts like broken paper-dolls.<br/><br/>The Corpsman is hoisting the Corporal to her feet, without even trying to offer an apology for her superior.  "Looks like meat tonight," the corporal trails off, leaving the scrolls behind as another soldier helps prop the crutches under her arms, and they direct her away back towards the medical cabin.<br/><br/>*<br/><br/>A few yards away, the rangers have already been summoned.  They stand at ease, some smoking long clay pipes and chatting with their friends from other units.  Some enjoying a last bit of stove-prepared food, some re-checking their packs and rain gear.  They are uniform in some ways... their oiled overcloaks, their muddy boots clearly the best the unit could spare, their packs expertly sewn and reinforced, their quivers capped with identical covers, their emblems-- green and gray interpretations of an owl in flight-- on their leather armor beneath.  Some's bows are not so perfectly identical, but each is tuned to the ranger who carries it.  Varying woods, markings, grip-wraps, lengths, angles of recurve-- the rangers' bows are as finely tuned as the ranger itself.  All are expected to be effective as barraging at 400 yards, suppressing at 300 yards, and sniping at 100 yards.  For close-quarters, they carry a variety of short and longswords, with standard issue blades being rare among these elite troops.<br/><br/>Most varied among them are their faces.  Here, an elven woman, perhaps just out of youth, with a hairless, tattooed head sits back-to-back with a human man of stout build, the braids in his pale locks and beard dyed red and blue with native berries.  There, a young lad with barely any beard sharpens his knife meticulously as he recounts the tale of "The Barmaster's Daughter" to an old man and a dwarven woman.  A red-haired beauty of a ranger writes as quickly as she can with a quill and pen while her friend, a tougher-looking, but also lovely young woman dictates a letter to her in common parlance and thieves' cant.  A dwarven man arm-wrestles with two of his fellow rangers, both human men, simultaneously until their fists touch in the middle while a third, a tall, angular-faced half-orc makes hideous faces over their shoulders to try to distract him.<br/><br/>More tools of their trade are about.  Several birds, a couple dogs, a fox, a snake... It's as motley a group as one would expect.