ooc: You can continue discussing purchases in your solo threads and the OOC, but let's get the show on the road

Planting 3, 571: JOURNEY DAY 1

The morning of the caravan's departure came, with the hiring of four more guards. As a favor to Mouse, despite their relative lack of skill, each would be paid just enough to cover their expenses en route to their destination - the kingdom of Keoland. It would be a long journey - hundreds of miles - on foot, save for Frank on the fetching new horse he could scarcely control.

Some of the townsfolk showed up to see the group off - Jess, Dubricus, Brother Martin. Most were simply glad to see them go.

The itinerary? 200 miles through the Yeomanry - through the villages of Westburn, Abbeyvale, Burn, Tumblebrook, Thistledale, Newick, and to the twin towns of Daywine and Jaedrae on either side of the border. After that, it was another two hundred miles, first to the town of Haven, then the villages of Newcombe, Waycombe, and Labalna before taking the Longspear Trail skirting the Hool Marsh and Dreadwood Preserve - two hundred miles more, total, before reaching the town of Nine Oaks, after which it was another hundred miles through the towns of Nine Okas and Burle, then Saltmarsh, Seaton, and Splitrock.

Seven hundred miles, if they stuck with the caravan the whole way. The caravan didn't stop in every town, but accounting for periods when they did the entire trip would take three months.

ooc: Yeah I told Simon and Frank it was a third of that, but I didn't bother working out the math and the fact that the caravan would be stopping frequently. It was a three month trip. I'll update your training hours accordingly.
This message was last updated by the GM at 15:29, Mon 22 Apr.

Simon did not want to do this, walk across entire inches of a nation scale map.  He resolved to try and keep his pre-trip travel exhaustion to himself, but he was already mentally worn out from weeks of travel from a place where he'd had a (for this world) comfortable bed, regular good meals, and safety.  And slavery.  And a society founded on and imbued with a mercenary callousness that didn't have room for, or seem to want any of his values.  A society that couldn't learn to work together, that constantly dragged its own people back down into the boiling cauldron of mediocracy that they were stuck in... well.  He genuinely liked, and was sorry to leave a precious few of them, but he couldn't help paraphrasing Jack Nicholson's Joker, that town needs an enema.

So they'd gone in search of a rumor, and found them, and they actually seemed to get along.  More people who knew where he was from, who could appreciate his pop-culture references, and sympathize with his bouts of homesickness, and longing for the comforts of technology.  And they appreciated magic, because of course how could they not, and some of them could do it!  He reached down to his hip and unconsciously patted the sack that carried his loom, reassuring himself that it was still there.  But these folks had worn out their welcome here the same way he and Frank had at Captain Argyle's place.  Through inexperience, and ignorance, and they needed to move along.  He couldn't blame them, it could happen to anyone.  Probably happens to all the dimensional travelers.  That's going in my Yelp review, 'Natives very judgmental, 1/5 stars'.

Simon knew he was going to go crazy unless he found a way to be social and satisfy his curiosity, not to mention his mandate, despite his every day exhaustion.  So he decided to make an effort to get to know everyone, and kill three birds with one stone.  So he walked with a different person every day, even making the effort with Frank despite having to crane his neck to look the man in the face up on his horse.  And he chatted as much as he could, tying a rough cloth across his face when the dust got too bad, and it helped distract him from the aches in his back and feet and legs, and everything.  He looked forward to stopping in their first town.

And one night he asked Frank for a chat in private.

[Can you re-open Coffee Talk, or start a new thread for Frank and I?  Or should we use PMs?]
This message was last edited by the player at 20:15, Mon 22 Apr.