Music smiles wide as she stands at the edge of the firelight. Her natural habitat, she thinks to herself.
"Okay! Everyone settled? The story I'm about to give you is truth, told to you as it was told to me...
"In the taverns of the Gardener's Plains, where the fields of the farms feed and are fed by the lifeblood of warring armies, tales arose of a monster.
The Harvestman, they called it. Some said it was a demon, others the rogue familiar of some cruel wizard. I know one old carriage driver who thought it was an avatar of the Gardener himself, death come to claim those who had cheated it in the past. Origins aside, everyone who saw it agreed on the shape of it. A living scarecrow in a soldier's tabard, with a darkly stained sickle in one hand.
Now, tavern tales are often no more than simply tales, but this particular bogeyman left enough corpses in its wake to prove that something stalked the wide roads. Fear was high, and few dared brave the night lest it be their death whispered of over the next day's drink.
But there was one who did not shrink from the danger our Harvestman presented. A bard, not quite unlike myself, determined to track the killer and bring the truth of it to light. And track it he did! Where bodies were found and survivors came to rest he arrived, so quick you'd think him a seer. Where others whispered of the carnage, he orated. His confidence showed, and as far as anyone was concerned the story of the Harvestman was his story.
It was his confidence that was his undoing in the end, and his ego. Tales of the monster had been building for months, and the list of its victims grew longer and longer. Where the bard went, people knew that the stories would follow. He commanded the attention of every patron of every tavern, he had his every meal and drink paid for, and everyone knew his name. And on an evening when he had a few too many of his drinks paid for, he got sloppy.
It was as simple as leaving his bag on the table instead of on the floor. Knocked over in the middle of his grand retelling, spilling the straw-lined tunic out in plain view of all onlookers, and the survivors he had purposefully left to lend weight to the legend he intended to build by any means necessary.
He pulled the sickle on them in a panic, eliminating any doubt of his murderous fraud and cleaving himself a path out into the open night. No one's seen the bard since, but every now and again someone tells tales of a murderous scarecrow on the wide roads. A scarecrow who always seems to let one victim live to tell the tale."
She bows as she finishes the story, leaves the firelight for the next tale, and happily chats the rest of the night away.
Music, Storytelling Professional
"Okay! Everyone settled? The story I'm about to give you is truth, told to you as it was told to me...
"In the taverns of the Gardener's Plains, where the fields of the farms feed and are fed by the lifeblood of warring armies, tales arose of a monster.
The Harvestman, they called it. Some said it was a demon, others the rogue familiar of some cruel wizard. I know one old carriage driver who thought it was an avatar of the Gardener himself, death come to claim those who had cheated it in the past. Origins aside, everyone who saw it agreed on the shape of it. A living scarecrow in a soldier's tabard, with a darkly stained sickle in one hand.
Now, tavern tales are often no more than simply tales, but this particular bogeyman left enough corpses in its wake to prove that something stalked the wide roads. Fear was high, and few dared brave the night lest it be their death whispered of over the next day's drink.
But there was one who did not shrink from the danger our Harvestman presented. A bard, not quite unlike myself, determined to track the killer and bring the truth of it to light. And track it he did! Where bodies were found and survivors came to rest he arrived, so quick you'd think him a seer. Where others whispered of the carnage, he orated. His confidence showed, and as far as anyone was concerned the story of the Harvestman was his story.
It was his confidence that was his undoing in the end, and his ego. Tales of the monster had been building for months, and the list of its victims grew longer and longer. Where the bard went, people knew that the stories would follow. He commanded the attention of every patron of every tavern, he had his every meal and drink paid for, and everyone knew his name. And on an evening when he had a few too many of his drinks paid for, he got sloppy.
It was as simple as leaving his bag on the table instead of on the floor. Knocked over in the middle of his grand retelling, spilling the straw-lined tunic out in plain view of all onlookers, and the survivors he had purposefully left to lend weight to the legend he intended to build by any means necessary.
He pulled the sickle on them in a panic, eliminating any doubt of his murderous fraud and cleaving himself a path out into the open night. No one's seen the bard since, but every now and again someone tells tales of a murderous scarecrow on the wide roads. A scarecrow who always seems to let one victim live to tell the tale."
She bows as she finishes the story, leaves the firelight for the next tale, and happily chats the rest of the night away.