Myrkentown: Gilroy Chokes.

[Carnath-Emory]

The rain has been incessant, since the hour of Archimedes' miserable death. The rain has showered down, a fine deluge that coats the boots of commoner and noble alike with the sort of thin mud which is all the drought-dry earth can manage. It has proven problematic to carriages already, although those travelling upon horseback have fared better -- excepting the occasional tumble in a sinkhole. Myrken's populace had perhaps been a little too zealous in their attempts at wells, during the worst of the heatwave.

The rain has bombarded the slopes of the northeasten Sisakoon Mountains, where months of searing heat had left natural vegetation withered and dead, burning the very roots from the dry earth. Ordinarily such shrubbery holds the soil secure above its solid, granite bedrock -- but this is no longer the case, and it had been a delicate balance between friction and gravity that kept the area from disaster.

The problem here is that a road was long-ago cut through these mountains, disrupting the natural balance between vegetation, bedrock and friction.

The problem here is that several weeks of pounding rain has saturated the earth atop the road and pushed that balance to breaking point.

It begins gently, at first: water seeps from the rocky wall from which the road is cut, leaking over the path's surface and trickling onwards downhill. It makes the surface slippery, yes, but this is hardly an insurmountable obstacle. What follows is another matter entirely: a matter of super-saturated soil on the hill looming over that road, a granite bedrock that can absorb little of the moisture, and an incline steep enough to permit a mudslide. The stress upon that soil becomes too much, overwhelming a friction that was already diminished, and countless tons of water, soil, vegetation and rubble dislodge to slide with a great rumble over that road. The force of the collapse is sufficient that a portion overflows, a muddy cascade that continues further downhill, gathering weight and momentum, carrying boulders and trees with it until reaching the flatland below.

As such things go, this could have been far worse: that land is largely uninhabited. But that road is choked with earth and rock and muddy debris; for quite some time, Gilroy's Pass, the most convenient route between Myrken Wood and neighbouring Derry, is ...impassable.

[Jirai]

Having an impassible pass was quite the problem for rain-soaked Myrken. And, obviously, for any caught in the mudslide, as well.

Over the next few days, two absences might be noted. The first found by the fact that Councillor Roschen was no longer occupying his shop. Further thought, for those concerned, would lead one to the marked absence of his rather questionable guard from any of her usual or not so usual haunts. This was nothing odd in and of itself, but might become so when combined with the tailor's apparent dissapearance. Looking further into these absences would turn up some information, though: Councillor Roschen and his cloaked guard had last been seen headed towards Derry by the most convenient route - Gilroy's Pass.