See For Yourself

## **Synopsis**

In Chapter 37: See For Yourself, Erland laid eyes on the Harvesting Yard for the first time as Orba kept careful watch on the supervisor's whereabouts.  The scouting information we had received prior to our arrival proved to be mostly reliable when it came to the general layout of the camp – but it was the details that would determine our success after nightfall as we attempted to breach the interior.

As many a note was being taken in the operations depot, Jillian and Graven were prepping for a less visible way to get to the other side of the waterfall after the party had reunited at sundown.  Her plan involved sneaking into the depot's cellar to pilfer a number of lengths of rope, which we would use to tie between the beams underneath the catwalk and create a safe means of wading through the rushing water.  After making sure their lookouts had hunkered down on the top floor, they temporarily deposited any belongings that might weigh them down – and set to work.

Beezaura and Safira were returning from the cave with the stashed goods, and opted to take a moment to watch what was happening along the shoreline with the wagon and the strange machinery.  Just as it seemed the workers were finishing up what they were doing, a trio of Black Lion barbarians rode up in haste to request immediate assistance – as it seemed their people had been attacked in another area of the Chaki Mountains.  They received no such help, and spurned and infuriated they headed in the other direction toward the camp.

As they neared where Safira and Beezaura were hiding, the lead barbarian (who had the look of a necromancer about her) sensed the presence of the recently slain bear – and stopped to perform a ritual to reanimate its corpse.  The spirit of the bear would not go quietly, however – and it fled to seek Safira's protection before submitting to the inevitability of conflict.  There was a brief moment of disagreement over whether to intervene when they had not yet been detected, but Safira couldn't turn her back on the spirit and leapt into the fray.

As Beezaura absorbed the many blows raining down from the undead creature and the Black Lion soldiers, Safira picked enemies off from a distance – and when the fight was won, the spirit expressed its gratitude by allowing its essence to be absorbed by the bow that now seemed to have more than just wolf tricks up its sleeve.  After a brief detour to poke around where the laborers had been pumping and cranking, we figured it was time to make our way back to the meetup spot.

Over the course of the day, Erland and Orba had gotten a good look at some of the comings and goings of the Harvesting Yard: guard changing shifts, carriages arriving to load and unload goods and a system of signals utilized by the sentry towers to check in on each other.  Still, there was much about what was going on inside that was impossible to discern from up here – a problem that Jillian and Graven were making good progress toward solving until a number of waterborne snakes felt they had encroached on their comfortable riverbank habitat.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: three natural ones were rolled in this Chapter. 1 by Matt, and 2 by Anthony.