Xeresgate
You make your way out of the Serpent's Head and Tressex Square and south toward the southern exit from Xeresgate. You eventually pass the cross-poled, sharpened-tipped, wooden barricades and the slumbering town watchman at the space between barricades which makes up the pass out of town. (It's quite obvious that King Michael should never have granted this particular watch a stool.)
As you make your way out of the city, you feel ever more free, not having to worry about bumping into anyone and creating another "ghost" hubbub in town. Also, having eaten recently, you are full and ready for the adventure that no doubt lies ahead.
You focus on the south, seeing a rather expansive (and thick) forest, which you can only assume to be the "southern forest". It is a foreboding looking place, and it grows dark not very far into it, even though the noonday sun burns brightly overhead. You shudder at the first glance of it.
Determined to find the 'Nervates, however, you press onward. It isn't long before the darkness of the forest has swallowed you completely and the way from which you came in is naught but a speck of light in the distance. Even given the fact that your eyes have long since adjusted as well as they can to the darkness, you cannot help but wish that you had a torch or something useful with you.
The grass or moss (you can't really tell) beneath your hard leather shoes is at least comforting to walk on. You haven't heard a bird or squirrel or even the slightest of bugs for quite some time now, and it unnerves you.
Suddenly, a stick snaps beneath your foot! It is the first real sound you've heard for so long that it makes you gasp and jump back. When you do so, you hear a rustling through the thick foliage around you, although you are unable to determine its source in the darkness.
"What issss it?" you hear, hissing from the darkness.
"I can't tell, ssssimply," is returned.
You are frozen with fear. Half of you wants to run, the other half doesn't know what would happen if you did (and realizes that there are much faster things in this world than you).
"Doessss it ssssee ussss?"
"I don't think sssso."
"Do you ssssee it with your normal eyessssight?"
You wonder, "Normal eyesight?!?"
"No. I think it'ssss dangeroussss."
"Agreed. Let'ssss kill it."
Well, your ears certainly still work well, so you being bolting out of the forest, hoping against hope to outrun the danger that the 'Nervates apparently are! You run, feeling them right behind you. One of them manages to slice through the tendon in your calf, sending you sprawling to the ground in severe pain, but as they are instantly upon you, ripping open your chest cavity with their razor sharp claws, you really don't feel it for very long.
As you make your way out of the city, you feel ever more free, not having to worry about bumping into anyone and creating another "ghost" hubbub in town. Also, having eaten recently, you are full and ready for the adventure that no doubt lies ahead.
You focus on the south, seeing a rather expansive (and thick) forest, which you can only assume to be the "southern forest". It is a foreboding looking place, and it grows dark not very far into it, even though the noonday sun burns brightly overhead. You shudder at the first glance of it.
Determined to find the 'Nervates, however, you press onward. It isn't long before the darkness of the forest has swallowed you completely and the way from which you came in is naught but a speck of light in the distance. Even given the fact that your eyes have long since adjusted as well as they can to the darkness, you cannot help but wish that you had a torch or something useful with you.
The grass or moss (you can't really tell) beneath your hard leather shoes is at least comforting to walk on. You haven't heard a bird or squirrel or even the slightest of bugs for quite some time now, and it unnerves you.
Suddenly, a stick snaps beneath your foot! It is the first real sound you've heard for so long that it makes you gasp and jump back. When you do so, you hear a rustling through the thick foliage around you, although you are unable to determine its source in the darkness.
"What issss it?" you hear, hissing from the darkness.
"I can't tell, ssssimply," is returned.
You are frozen with fear. Half of you wants to run, the other half doesn't know what would happen if you did (and realizes that there are much faster things in this world than you).
"Doessss it ssssee ussss?"
"I don't think sssso."
"Do you ssssee it with your normal eyessssight?"
You wonder, "Normal eyesight?!?"
"No. I think it'ssss dangeroussss."
"Agreed. Let'ssss kill it."
Well, your ears certainly still work well, so you being bolting out of the forest, hoping against hope to outrun the danger that the 'Nervates apparently are! You run, feeling them right behind you. One of them manages to slice through the tendon in your calf, sending you sprawling to the ground in severe pain, but as they are instantly upon you, ripping open your chest cavity with their razor sharp claws, you really don't feel it for very long.
