I’m so sorry for not following up sooner.
It takes half a day to make it down the mountain, then to internet, and we’ve been pretty busy up at Helm’s Deep, fitting up rooms, setting up a functional indoor kitchen, and otherwise getting everything ready for what looks to be a very chilly winter. We’re high enough in the mountains that we’re already dealing with a few inches of snow and imagine we’ll need to properly batten the hatches (using nautical terms for a castle, I know) and generally hunker down before December. Rasia, our surrogate mom from the closest village, has basically forced her neighbors on penalty of death to give us every spare article of clothing they can. We’ve tried to politely decline, but then wagons end up at our door with bundles of coats, hats, dried meats, etc. I love her.
Everyone is well and sends their love. Theo is especially well. He’s been keeping busy marking the entire perimeter of the castle and chasing ducks out of his favorite pond.
Some of us have had a few out there dreams since we’ve been here, but otherwise, no ghosties or anything else out of the mundane. I’ve tried to ask Rasia via translator what she meant about people being in the castle and how some can’t see it, but she just keeps telling us that it’s a good omen to have wanderers making it a home. So that’s something.
There’s not much more to tell you right now, well, except that I wrote Marty when I wrote all of you last time, to fill him in, to ask if he could see the forum now, to see how he was doing, etc. I just read his response:
“I’m okay, Eaves. Not much new happening on my end. I have feelers out about the wall around the Mountaineers, but nothing concrete. The Low is essentially done for. Without the unifying force of Monarch’s Mountain, things got more and more locked down and elitist. Whatever’s left of them is probably sequestered away in dark corners of the internet, eating its tail. There’s weird energy out here. Like magical New Year’s Eve. Everyone waiting for the ball to drop. The mundane quiet before the new age.
I’ve gotten cryptic messages from Lauren a few times, telling me to find this person, go to this place… I don’t know what it amounts to, but I’m doing what’s asked of me and otherwise enjoying time with my family.
I’m not surprised Ascender was at the core of building the wall, though I’m more inclined to think of it as a protective barrier, a cocoon, rather than a prison. It’s allowing them to keep fighting the good fight while every other faction out here seems to be turning to dust. And now it’s letting you in, which in my mind is 100% white hat behavior. There’s always repercussions and outcomes you can’t account for, Ascender takes the manor, and the Low falls, you join the sanctuary and end up leading it to safety. The Mountaineers get blockaded and find it’s the perfect vantage to keep on saving the world.
It’s why I’m not fighting to get back to the Mounties. I love that motley crew, and have my life back because of them, but what if one day the Guide decides I’m needed to help them do something, and I lose my family again? Magic took them from me once, and that’s not something I can risk. I don’t know where that line is, the event horizon where I can help out here without being dragged back in, but I’d rather play it safe for as long as I can because getting back everything you ever lost isn’t something that ever happens, not to guys like me.
I miss you all, and I love you, dearly. I’ll do whatever I can out here. Please keep me in the loop, on both Basecamps. I’ll keep scouting out here in the wilderness; you keep climbing mountains."
