#expedition exposition

“…”

*Inhale, exhale. He walks, and then knocks on their door.*

Your gaze catches on the stall with the plants in pots around it. As you get closer you can see it sells magical spell components, but not just that also selling a few common and simple magical items. At first you aren't sure what about it caught your eye, it doesn't stand out in a particular way.

The stall itself is a wooden frame with a white canvas covering, the plants are alright but not bright or massively unusual. Its actually when it reflects the sun's beam directly into you face, making you shift away a touch, that you notice it. A brass pendant, hanging from one of the supporting beams of the frame.

You've seen that symbol before. The brief swell of sensation from the memory rises in you, fire, pure fire. The same rune he saw in his mind when he reached into the Network.

*His eyes alight, and he points to it, addressing the shopkeeper.*

Its unclear what alerts him to it first, the sound, the smell, the distant flickers, or perhaps some natural divine affinity, but whatever it is, it brings his attention. There, down the road, just past the bend, fire. A sweeping focused beam of it, burning across a large swath of land. He cannot yet see the cause of the magic, but he can see the scorched ground, burnt to cinder and ash, nothing left behind.

The smell of burning wood and plant, and as he follows the plumes of smoke he sees more smoke beyond and behind the current source. Yet the forest appears to not be alight, the trees are scorched but not aflame.

There is no shrubbery or ground cover of plants for quite a distance into the woodland around the path, just the cut stems of the plants that once were. Here and there, in increasing quantity the further towards the curve in the path, is pockmarked ground, burnt, ash long since blown away by the wind, leaving the bare earth. No sprouts have yet begun to grow in the uncovered soil.

[ @professor-azran @shepherd-to-the-flock @the-moist-samurai @splintered-faith ]

*He takes all this in, and grins. This may be something worth his time in this wretched place. He turns towards the rest of the group, still smiling.*

As you cast the magic, you can feel the presence of numerous undead, some crowded around both you and Shepherd, some below down in the bar, some across the hall in the other bedroom and a few gathered around in various spots, a small gathering on the stairs as well.

There is an elemental that briefly passes the edge of your range, outside the tavern. There is the faint feeling of a fey touched being, downstairs and another fey being, immaterial like the undead flitting around with the undead. No aberration within thirty feet at this current time.

"Give me a moment please," she doesn't turn around to respond, lifting a crate off of a cart and onto the stall. It has the sound of clinking glass as she moves it. The stall is mostly set up other than the actual items being sold.

As she takes off the lid it looks like the crate is in fact filled with glass bottles. Green glass with labels that can't be read at this angle.

*He waits, folding his hands behind his back as he watches her dig through bottles.*

A harried young elven woman is setting up a stall that sells various things that may be from an apothocary? Its a little hard to tell from this distance and the shop isn't fully set up.

There are shops down the way, it looks like on the roof tops of the lower houses, and on the street of the same level a market is beginning to be set up.

*His grip on the lantern tightens.*

@dmed-expedition