The Story So FarThe
Tall Tree Holt was a peaceful home of elves for several generation that sadly is no more. The elves there found a stone, fallen from the sky, they believed to be magical and brought it back to the Holt. Inventive as they were they named it
"The Stone from the Sky".The nearby trolls, allies who'd begun to distrust the elves as more and more magic users were born, were none too happy about this. Combined with the quite recent birth of the tribe's first Metal-Shaper, this was the last straw for the trolls. When they couldn't trade for the Stone they broke all contact with the elves and retreated into their mountain.
They didn't stay there for long though. One evening, just before sunset,
they attacked the Holt. Many elves lost their lives and many magic users were captured, taken into slavery by the trolls. But some managed to escape. They were the revenge hungry
Bloodmane; the soul siblings
Branchwalker and
Dawngazer;
Brighteyes, son of the dead chief; the brothers
Childwolf and
Lizardstalker; the sisters
Cloudbird and
Eveningsky;
Eclipse, the loner; the huntress
Silvereyes and her father
Greyspear, an elder who was very close to the chief;
Squirrel with her two children
Quicksand and
Redstreak.
A mere third of the once large Holt, wolves and all.
With escape and search for safety as their main goal they fled the Holt, which had been set aflame by the trolls.
Greyspear, as the eldest, took the lead,
Brighteyes being far too young to take on the role of chief. Both luck and misfortune followed them. They met a wanderer named
Riv, a youth with a somewhat violent attitude. They also found more of the kin;
One-Edge and
Longsong, a Recognized pair grieving over the loss of their young son. Young
Eveninglight also proved to still be alive and free.
But the trolls hadn't given up. A small scouting party caught up with the survivors. Some elves were injured in the resulting brawl, but all are believed to have escaped alive. After the ambush the elves were split up.
Brighteyes,
Cloudbird,
Eclipse,
Greyspear,
Eveninglight,
Eveningsky,
Redstreak and
Squirrel were nowhere to be found. Wounded and exhausted the survivors could do nothing but hide from the trolls and grieve once more. Some joy was found in the appearance of a new wanderer,
Sunsleaf.
Then came the question:
what do we do now?
Dawngazer and
Longsong, inspired by the newcomers, remembered old stories of a group of
bird-blooded elves that once were part of the Tall Tree Holt.
Dawngazer therefore suggested to seek out other elves and ask for assistance and to be
especially eyes-high for the bird-bloods. Old family was still family - the could possibly be more inclined to help and there was that half forgotten ledgend of them possessing
a powerful magical object...Thus the group set out onto the Plains. There they finally found some decent prey: longrunners (horses). After another moon on the run they met two more strangers,
BrightStar and
ClearIce, two brothers from much colder lands.
They offered to share their shelter and although hesitant at first the survivors accepted. After
Dawngazer explained to them how the Tall Tree Holt had burned,
BrightStar and
ClearIce asked to join them.
Although the first day at the shelter started out somewhat tense, the mood lightened after a while. Even the bonds, different as they were, came to some sort of agreement of peace.
The next night, refreshed from sleeping in warm furs and sheltered from the harsh winds of the plains, the survivors split up to get more food, as well as tools.
Bloodmane and
Sunsleaf took it upon themselves to gather useful herbs and something to make baskets of.
ClearIce went fishing. The rest of the group went hunting for more longrunners.
One-Edge and
Childwolf, because of their injuries, stayed in the shelter together with
Longsong and the newly recovered
Treebreeze to watch the cubs.
The hunters found a herd of longrunners. Everything seemed to be going fine, but panic suddenly broke out among the prey, as if they were being chased by something.
Not wanting to lose their prey the hunters still tried to take down as many longrunners as they could, while avoiding being trampled. Still,
Riv ended up with a longrunner falling on him,
BrightStar broke a few ribs and
Eveninglight fell into a deep hole in the ground - a trap made to capture longrunners.
Meanwhile, back at the shelter,
Bloodmane and
Sunsleaf return to hear quite a story from the cubsitters. Not long after the others had left
Longsong had begun telling the cubs a story. Just about halfway through a sound of stone hitting stone and two hurried footsteps could be heard outside. But only two.
They got no reply to their sendings.
One-Edge went outside to get a closer look, finding a small, blue crystal obviously shaped by magic, as well as the scent of an unknown elf.
One-Edge gave the crystal to
Longsong for safe-keeping and went to follow the tracks of the stranger.
Back with the hunters, what had scared the longrunners proved to be
other elves. A hunting party from
The Children of the Oaks had been after the same herd as the survivors and the resulting chaos made an enemy out of the strangers' hunt leader,
Claw.
After some hesitation and injuries the survivors accepted the strangers' offer to follow them back to their big camp - a gathering of all the Children's small tribes, called 'Branches' for a huge celebration they called the New Turn Feast.
In their hunting camp the survivors found
Eclipse, who seemed quite at home with the Children and greeted his tribe mates with lukewarm interest.
The Feast was unlike anything the survivors had seen before in their lives. So many elves in the same place, so much noise and music and a to top it off, a huge bonfire in the middle. Some were overwhelmed, others delighted.
The Children of the Oaks proved to be friendly and fairly used to visiting elves...excepted none of them had ever heard of a bond-friend before. This resulted in some supicion and one crisis, when the pack's leading female wolf
Softpaws decided to give birth in one of the food storage tents.
Other happy surprises were also in store. First
Haze and
Redstreak found their way back, half starved and thristy.
Greyspear and
Squirrel caught up with their kin, together with the stranger
Sureshot. Soon after them
Gale, who hadn't been seen since the first troll attack, also proved to be alive and kicking.
The reunion wasn't all good though.
Sureshot appearantly came from the same tribe as
Sunsleaf and she wasn't at all pleased to see him.
Around the same time the Children of the Oaks found out about the survivors actually
sharing blood with their wolves, which got a mixed reception so serious it ended in a challenge among the Children's chiefs! Sadly for the survivors, the First Chief
Keensight had to step down, leaving
Palepelt in charge - an elf not in favor of mixing elf and animal.
Worse yet, the Child of the Oaks
Claw challenged the leaderless survivors for rule over them. She lost the challenge, but other Children of the Oaks have meanwhile attacked the wolf
Softpaws who has newborn cubs.
As if that wasn't bad enough,
a High One like elf appeared in the middle of the camp, only to vanish again after having flamed the conflict between the pureblooded and wolf-blooded elves. That elf's departure was followed by a lot of the Children of the Oaks
starting to act strange. Strange to the point of mindlessly attacking all the wolf-blooded elves they could get their hands on. All our elves can do now is flee!
Summary last updated: 5th of September 2015 (yes, this is in need of updating - more recent update can be found
on our website)
Blue = Has a player
Green = Adoptable!
Black = Non-Player Character
Author
Topic: Survivors of a Lost Holt (Read 10614 times)