I’ll drop the units I have associated with it into the Army section but I thought I would try and write a bit of lore to support my new Herd army. Idea is a write it as I finish the units and somehow cobble a story together out of it.
Here are the first two instalments:
[1]
Jonas gingerly crept through the carpet of ferns the covering forest floor. He’d been absconding from the village more these days since discovering the trampled pathways into the area locally known as the Naipe. No one else seemed to notice their existence but something had been venturing though the trees, unseen by the cover of darkness or darker still, Majik. He’d been harvesting mushrooms when he’d seen the foot, or on reflection, hoof prints in the soft clay-heavy soil. Initially he’d thought nothing of them, assuming that they were the result of Granlay’s flock of curmudgeonly sheep being driven to new pastures. The sun had been low over the hills and as he’d returned back down the valley he mulled over some more of the finer details. Those imprints were surely too large for a sheep and seemed too regular to be made by the slow stumbling of a dumb animal. As he’d looked down at the marks his own feet made in the soft loam it dawned on him that their spacing seemed eerily similar. He returned home to his cottage and slept restlessly that night.
Moving as soundlessly as he was able, he navigated the outstretched roots and thick grasping boughs of the great wood. Everyone knew that though The Naipe hosted fairy tales to scare youngsters, there was nothing to fear from the garnbut trees that grew there. The wolves had been driven out in his grandfather’s time and while Jonas and his friends had often come up to trap toithes and other rodents, that was as dangerous as it got. Following his recent discovery, the forest felt on edge and as he forged on he was apprehensive. He slowly realised the canopy overhead was beginning to thin. What had been a dark and brooding environment had moved to more dappled shade. As he rounded a great trunk, pitted with carvings and cracked branches, the cover abruptly ended and he could make out a clearing through the sparse foliage.
Confusion swept over the youth, everyone knew that the woodland stretched for hectares solidly without interruption. Logging parties entered to provide the village for the winter but there were strict rulings on their activity to preserve the delicate balance that his people revered. He faltered forwards, gently pushing the slender branches apart to understand the meaning of what he’d found. Pressing on, the scale of his discovery and it’s implications set his mind racing.
[2]
*Jonas stood and stared, his jaw slack. He’d been through these woods countless times in his youth and would swear on all that he held holy there were no man made constructions this deep into its heart. Yet here, standing plain as the hand in front of him was the archway of some kind of stone temple with roughly hewn walls surrounding it. Well trampled clods of earth had been thrown up by presumably the same hooves that he had been tracking earlier. The blue grey stone seemed to give off a gentle yet threatening ambience as if mildly sentient. Grasping the loose masonry and in parts causing it to collapse were vines and squat foliage snuggled deep into crevices. They looked for all the world that they had been there decades. A movement caught his eye and to his fascination a majestic centaur strode slowly and purposefully into the frame of the temple’s archway. Pausing to survey the area he leisurely waved his left hand from which a pale blue flame guttered into life. Now providing a stark illumination, the fireball cast a harsh relief on the surrounding treeline and Jonas suddenly became very aware of his vulnerability. *
*Kaar’keeth could see the juvenile, he was so poorly hidden it would be hard not to. Even before uttering the incantation to provide light in the gloom, his disruption of the forest’s silhouette was obvious. Igniting the fireball just increased the sense of threat, letting the human know he may see him. He stood, slowly debating his options and letting the impostor consider the situation. Allowing just enough time for the atmosphere to be uncomfortable, he finally turned and trotted back to his followers. *
*Joans breathed long trembling breaths, had the half-man seen him? Surely he had, but if so why had he taken no action? Perhaps he’d gone to sound the alarm, perhaps not. Even so, being anywhere but “here” currently seemed the best place to be. *
Jonas Ran
