Myrkentown: Come Spring, Renewal.
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 3:18 amMyrkentown's heart may be gauged as simply as this: take yourself to the corner of one of its cobblestone lanes, accost a passerby, ask him how he reckons this year's August harvest will go.
"Fair to middlin'," he'll invariably reply ... and this is the most optimism Myrken farmers have confessed to in years.
Of course, one shouldn't take this to mean that Myrkentown has achieved a lasting peace, or even what most would consider the transient sort, but they've come to reckon trouble differently, here. A person doesn't last long in Myrkentown without making such adjustments; his sanity won't allow it, so that there's a certain brave stubborness which marks the farmers and craftsmen of Myrken Wood, and a certain sense of immediacy.
Consider the matter of Baie, for instance, which has been a now-and-then spectre over the miles of Myrken Wood for several years. It was only very recently that the streets and homesteads grew lively with warnings of his return, but by early June they've come to tell a very different tale. Gone, they say, or Fled, if feeling particularly optimistic, and although they know this for a pretense, perhaps imagine in their hearts that repeating it over again will lend the tale some truth. After all, hasn't it already? Months now, without sight of the beast. In Myrkentown, that passes for peace very satisyingly.
Consider the matter of those riots, which were remarkable enough that they'll be livening up gossip through winter next. Oh, there was some suffering involved, and there was some very dreadful conflict at the end of it (barricades? fires? dragons? who knows for sure!), but it was precisely the catharsis that a very beleagured population had required. Suede Roschen has enjoyed a swell of popular support in the aftermath of it, and for a time so had the newly-installed Governor Bromn -- although a township quite accustomed to empty promises withholds much of its judgement until some of his actually materialise ... or fail to. In particular, this notion of free elections, despised by Councilor Guillaume, promised by Governor Helstone, promised again now by Bromn himself, to the ellation of commoners and the dread of nobility. Only time will prove that matter out, and Myrkentown has ... some patience left in it yet.
In a bizarre twist of chance, political turmoil has upstaged so many other troubles that they've gone almost unnoticed. The matter of Tannerback lane, for instance, where a score of men perished for reasons as yet unexplained. The encroachment of foreign agents onto one of Myrkentown's outlying farms: Militia and Janeiro alike had died at their hands. The slaughter of horses in their stables and the seizing of twenty men and women from their homes, for reasons that have thus far gone utterly unexplained. But what's remembered is dragons and barricades, is Janeiro and Constabulary and a Springtime that's not been nearly so dry as last year's.
Fair to middlin', a man will say, if you ask him on the street. But with hope that it'd best stay that way, for pantries have grown bare, and merchants have grown greedy, and since when did a loaf of bread cost so much ...
"Fair to middlin'," he'll invariably reply ... and this is the most optimism Myrken farmers have confessed to in years.
Of course, one shouldn't take this to mean that Myrkentown has achieved a lasting peace, or even what most would consider the transient sort, but they've come to reckon trouble differently, here. A person doesn't last long in Myrkentown without making such adjustments; his sanity won't allow it, so that there's a certain brave stubborness which marks the farmers and craftsmen of Myrken Wood, and a certain sense of immediacy.
Consider the matter of Baie, for instance, which has been a now-and-then spectre over the miles of Myrken Wood for several years. It was only very recently that the streets and homesteads grew lively with warnings of his return, but by early June they've come to tell a very different tale. Gone, they say, or Fled, if feeling particularly optimistic, and although they know this for a pretense, perhaps imagine in their hearts that repeating it over again will lend the tale some truth. After all, hasn't it already? Months now, without sight of the beast. In Myrkentown, that passes for peace very satisyingly.
Consider the matter of those riots, which were remarkable enough that they'll be livening up gossip through winter next. Oh, there was some suffering involved, and there was some very dreadful conflict at the end of it (barricades? fires? dragons? who knows for sure!), but it was precisely the catharsis that a very beleagured population had required. Suede Roschen has enjoyed a swell of popular support in the aftermath of it, and for a time so had the newly-installed Governor Bromn -- although a township quite accustomed to empty promises withholds much of its judgement until some of his actually materialise ... or fail to. In particular, this notion of free elections, despised by Councilor Guillaume, promised by Governor Helstone, promised again now by Bromn himself, to the ellation of commoners and the dread of nobility. Only time will prove that matter out, and Myrkentown has ... some patience left in it yet.
In a bizarre twist of chance, political turmoil has upstaged so many other troubles that they've gone almost unnoticed. The matter of Tannerback lane, for instance, where a score of men perished for reasons as yet unexplained. The encroachment of foreign agents onto one of Myrkentown's outlying farms: Militia and Janeiro alike had died at their hands. The slaughter of horses in their stables and the seizing of twenty men and women from their homes, for reasons that have thus far gone utterly unexplained. But what's remembered is dragons and barricades, is Janeiro and Constabulary and a Springtime that's not been nearly so dry as last year's.
Fair to middlin', a man will say, if you ask him on the street. But with hope that it'd best stay that way, for pantries have grown bare, and merchants have grown greedy, and since when did a loaf of bread cost so much ...