Midnight RPG - Chapter 9.03

Kevin

This begins a situation that I hope to be "resolved" by game time... Concerning what happened to Eranon and the trees of the Dead Marshes.

When last we left the heroes of Eredane, it seemed as though the great trees of the Dead Marshes enveloped Eranon. Quickly advancing some 20'-30', overtaking the young Elven wildlander... But what seemed to be is not the same as what has come to pass... Eranon stood firmly in the muck and mire on the outskirts of the Dead Marsh lands. He looked up into the black dense swamp-tree foliage. The wind began to rush. Cracking of bark and timber mixed with slurping splooshes and soon the wind carried a creaking moan on the foul smell of the putrid swamp beyond.
Holding aloft the necklace given to him by Ossion, he let loose the silver acorn held tight in his palm. Speaking into the slight wind Eranon heard the slump of his companions all caught in mid-fall... Vines and black tree limbs reached out from around and above the wildlander pulling his friends from their feet as they dangled, drifting into unconciousness.

the Whisperer
Fear not Eranon of the woodland realm. the wind would say.
As he began to hear the air escape the bodies of his friends, their joints cracking as the forest began to rip the human and orc bodies from limb to limb.

another voice
this one not of the whispering wind, this one built with the gravel of tension and tiresome grinding of wood and muck raking...
THEY DO NOT HEAR... THEY DO NOT KNOW... THEY DO NOT PASS! the voice of the black barked swamp cypress cracked as his timbers ground with a turn of what could appear to be the torso of this elder of the swamp. Its face, not that of a man, yet strange and alien. As it bellowed out, as if in pain, the swamp replied... Two... Three... Four... and a Fifth moaned in a song of death murmurs, lumber snapping and breaking as the body of one of the humans was tossed into the vines of another black cypress.
These trees... were not of the living whispering woods familiar to any Caransil or other woodland folk. These were the trees of the Dead Marsh, these were the trees remaining from the once proud cypress, the beautiful ash, the elm, the cottonwood and the sycamore... These were the last tree herders, now pushed to the outskirts of their lands. Able to go no further. For they would die if they traveled beyond the pale and foul energy of the sickening swamps. But perhaps "die" is a poor term. Can that which is already dead, truly die?
Eranon stands at the forefront of the black trees, perhaps he can ask these trees how they yet move when they are already DEAD?!!...

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Midnight: North & South Portal