Radagast leaves the hearth and crosses to a scarred table, where he unrolls a rough map of the Woodmen lands. Meren follows slowly, still wrapped in the blanket.
Radagast the Brown
Stand here, Meren. What you know must become a warning, not another burden you carry alone.
He weighs smooth stones on the map’s corners, then places one beside the southern road and another near the first cluster of Woodmen settlements. The black-sealed proclamations remain separate nearby.
Meren
I saw the southern road, the burned watchfires, and men waiting beneath the ridge. But the settlement names came from those who held me. I cannot swear they were true.
Radagast the Brown
Then separate sight from report. Point to what your eyes witnessed, and leave every claimed name marked as uncertain until it can be checked.
Meren leans over the map, one hand trembling above the ink. After a long pause, he touches a fork in the southern road, then a settlement marked beside a narrow stream.
Meren
This road I know. The stream I saw. The first name they repeated was Rhosgobel, but I do not know whether they meant the town itself or the settlements beyond it.
“Rhosgobel? That sounds ominous. I'll scout the area. If anything of shadow is lurking here, it will not escape me.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled -1)
Tuiwen
Rhosgobel? That sounds ominous. I’ll scout the area. If anything of shadow is lurking here, it will not escape me.
Tuiwen leaves the table and circles Rhosgobel’s hedge, keeping the proclamations and the hearth behind her. Oath-Bound caution narrows her search to what the ground and wards can prove.
Forest Warden’s Insight reads the living pattern beyond the hedge: roots bend naturally, birds remain calm, yet three patches of moss conceal disturbed soil along the southern approach.
Corruption Sense finds a thin residue of shadow there, old but deliberate. Eyes of the Unseen reveals invisible threads crossing the path, designed to report movement rather than bind it.
She draws the Elven blade and holds its edge above the earth. The blade’s pale reflection traces the threads to a dead ash root, where a hidden listening charm lies dormant.
Radagast the Brown
You found it. I felt no hand within the hedge, but that charm has been waiting for someone to notice it.
Tuiwen marks the charm’s position and cuts its reporting thread without disturbing the living root. The area is scouted: no active infiltrator remains, but the southern approach has been watched and the evidence is clear.