#neverfive mention

back in the pre-Silverborn release era, I collected all the released snippets into one document, all transcribed here. With our first Neverfive snippet released TODAY I'm happy to pick it back up again

Whinging Woods Stealth Baubling Snippet

Morrigan sprinted along the path through the Whinging Woods to catch up with Hawthorne and Arch, who appeared to be in a heated argument with some trees.

"Oh yes, how hilarious," a particularly knotty, ancient- looking oak grumbled at the boys. "Because tinsel doesn't attract a million tiny birds that want to nest in my glittery nether regions, does it? The disrespect..."

Morrigan laughed, then tried to cover it up with a cough as the tree turned its gnarly face towards her. A single shiny ornament swung comically from its left ear.

In the lead-up to Christmas, someone among the junior scholars (and Morrigan had a shrewd idea who that someone might be) had invented a game called 'Stealth Baubling'. The rules were simple: sneak into the Whinging Woods, hook a bauble on a branch, and run away before the tree noticed and gave you a wallop. (Harder than it sounded; there'd been a lot of injuries.)

Ms Dearborn had, of course, banned Stealth Baubling the moment she discovered it... thereby ensuring it spread among the junior and senior scholars like a winter cold. An official underground leaderboard quickly emerged (Hawthorne and Arch were currently battling for the top spot), and by the last week of term, half the trees were drooping beneath the weight of silver bells and velvet bows and colourful wooden nutcrackers. The Whinging Woods had never looked prettier, nor been crankier.

"Wasn't us!" Hawthorne protested unconvincingly, holding out his empty hands. "We haven't got any tinsel."

"NO, NOT ANYMORE YOU DON'T," bellowed a second tree, wrapped in so much of the stuff there was hardly an inch of bare trunk left.

"We can help you remove it, if you like?" Arch offered with a small, guilty smile. "Here, allow me"

THWACK!