Silvan walks over to the road and puts the torch on it, a few feet away from the grass and about 10 feet away from the bridge. Closing his eyes and desperately trying to remember if he had ever learned how to do this before, decides that logically the flint is the striker and would need to be in his primary (right) hand. He takes the steel in his left, leaving a bit of it decently far away from his hand in an attempt not to get burned, and he holds both of these about 3-4 inches above the torch. Then he strikes the flint to the steel, near the corners and the edges, in an attempt to make a spark.

It takes several attempts before you finally find an effective striking angle, and your left wrist begins to feel sore. Fortunately, after a few more strikes, the torch head catches fire; it begins with a small, smoldering flame, then spreads out, until the head of the torch burns brightly on the ground before you. Until this moment, you had not noticed the chill in your fingers from the night air. Now that they begin to warm again, the soreness in your wrist quickly fades, and faint memories of easier times quietly pass through your mind.

Silvan hands the torch to the Halfing and says, "There. Happy now, halfling? Silvan here to save the day, again, I suppose. Now get to work, I'm tired. We'll be making the fire on the road. Only non-flammable area I could find."

There is still no decent kindling around where you are standing, though you might be able to light the grass beneath your feet on fire anyway if you held the torch to it. Prehaps you will find something more suitable if you search the woods a bit more thoroughly. The torchlight makes visibility less of an issue.

Bridge Group

As "Ariana" walks downstream away from the rest of the group, she seems to fade into the darkness. After a moment, despite her brightly colored outfit, she can no longer be distinguished from the shadow of night.

ooc:
Okay, back to Zork we go

You are now in the woods. There are trees and some small plants here, but hardly any grass. The night is quiet, and only a very faint breeze blows by you.

Light? I guess you would be referring to fire? Warm light, yes?

I don't keep any handy...but can always try to make a bit...but its not much, and more an illusion than anything else...

"Anything will work. Torches, spells, whatever. As long as one of us can see, friend, it should be fine."

You do not see any crates labeled "KINDLING". There appear to be an assortment of trees and bushes. As you move deeper into the forest, you see more trees and bushes, along with some vines here and there, and an occasional small rodent scuttles away from you.

ooc:
Khazmon has now reached -10 hp. He is now fully and officially dead.

Your search for dried plant materials proves a bit more successful. There isn't much grass to speak of, however you manage to find a few loose tufts of dried leaves nestled at the feet of the larger trees. The ground is littered sparsely with dried twigs as well.

Bridge Group

The night wears on, and time passes you by. Through small gaps in the leaf-made roof over your heads, you can see bits of light from the rising moon. The light would not be enough to search by, but at least you can walk around with the assurance that the trees will not sneak up on you.

Falaanla

You can hear a faint sound in the back of your mind that vaguely resembles snoring.

Aanile

The last thing you can recall through your gently throbbing headache was digging your claws into one of the hideous creatures known as orcs. You caught a glint of steel in the corner of your eye, and then, nothing.

Now, as your eyes flutter open, you see a pair of glistening emerald eyes staring down at you from a slender elven face. After a few seconds, your vision clears, and you can discern a look of concern rests on the otherwise pristene face of your elven companion. You feel a gentle pressure on the front of your neck, but not so much as to stop you from speaking if you so choose. A glimmer of moonlight catches the corner of your eye, and reflects off the fringes of your companion's hair, and the studs in his armor. A cool, gentle breeze drifts through the fringes of your fur.

As you reach down to pick up a batch of dried leaves, they suddenly burst into flames. After reflexively pulling back, you notice that you seem to have a torch in one hand. After a few seconds, the flames die down, leaving char marks on the side of the tree where you found them.

Drakkenmaw & Falaanla & Reyolen

A small burst of light reaches your eyes from the nearby trees, roughly in the direction where the halfling was last headed.

Your companion seems a bit hesitant. Until she reaches up to you, it almost seems as if she has not fully wakened. Her touch, however, is soft and reassuring.

Aanile

As you reach up to touch your companion, you feel a stiffness in the side of your ribs, along with a dull pain. The discomfort is bearable, though, and as your hand brushes Taylen's cheek, he seems to be fully there. His voice wavers nervously as he begins to speak to you in Elven tongue.

As she walks behind the halted lizardman and his shoulder passenger, she pauses for a moment and stares at him, continuing to hum. She blinks a few times, tilts her head briefly, then shrugs her shoulders, and walks over to Silvan. "Do you think this will be sufficient? I've never had to light a fire outdoors before. Pappy... my father, that is, always had a supply of proper firewood and kindling oils." Through most of her speech, her elven accent remains consistent with her previous attempts, missing only an occasional inflection or undertone. On the word Pappy, however, the accent fails completely.

As Tay talks to her, she tries to sit up a little more, letting out a soft grunt and reaches for her side. "Wha... what happened?" She asks in her own tounge.

He switches his torch to his left hand, and picks up as many dead leaves and twigs as he can carry in his right.

You have no difficulty sitting up. The stiffness in your side remains, but you can move normally. As you touch your side, you feel cloth pulled tightly over your armor, soaked with a slightly tacky reddish liquid. It feels like blood. However, touching the spot brings only mild pain, and does not resoak the cloth.

Arttemis

You manage to gather an armful of dried leaves from another tree in your right arm. In all, your arm manages to hold about enough material to fill a gallon jug. Thanks to the moonlight beginning to edge through the trees, there is enough light to walk by without the torch. However, putting down a lit torch in the middle of the forest might not turn out very well for the forest.

Silvan stands up and sticks his rapier in the ground, roughly an equal distance from Ara, his last position, Aust, and the middle of the road, if that's entirely possible. Silvan then concentrates his mind on the task of casting, pushing away outside thoughts, visualizes the spell component, and begins chanting. He reaches forward and touches his rapier at the proper moment in the casting, and then finishes chanting.

You stab your rapier against the trodden earth with a stiff blow. However, the ground has been hardened by wheels of may wagons and the feet of many travelers, and the chill air makes it no softer. Once you let the blade go, it falls over, making a small bell-like clang as the handguard hits the earth.

As your spell draws to its conclusion, a faint aura of soft, white light forms around your blade. It slowly grows, until its light shines brightly as a well-tended campfire ever could. The light is pure, and shines in your eyes, forcing you to turn away for a brief moment to adjust to the light.

Drakkenmaw

Silvan makes a show of his blade, stabbing it into the ground, only to have it fall over before him. He then chants for a moment, speaking soft words that you can recognize at times as Draconic. When he finishes, the area around Silvan fills with a gentle white light, illuminating the area around him more brightly than you would expect from a fire. Perhaps he will not need you to gather firewood after all.

Falaanla, Willias

You can hear Silvan chanting, and he appears to concentrate on his thrown-down blade as if the very act of doing so would bring about all his worldly desires. It is a ritual you have seen before, one of many arcane means of casting a spell upon the blade. It is difficult to tell what he intends to cast, however, until the effect of it begins.

Slowly, the blade begins to glow upon the ground where it lay. Then, as Silvan's casting comes to an end, the light suddenly grows, almost in a flash, until it radiates light all around it. The light bathes the trees on both sides of the trodden path with a light as bright as any campfire you have before seen. Its light is white and pure, revealing all the hues of nature as if it were daylight. However, unlike the light of day, the spell reaches only a short distance from his blade, enough to light the area that surrounds him, and a short way into the nearby woods.

Arttemis

A sudden white glow appears from the direction where your new companions awaited your return. The light is bright and constant, not like any fire that you have seen before. Perhaps there is some magic involved in its creation. From where you now stand, it is difficult to make any judgement.

Aanile

For a brief instant, you find your attention drawn by what appears to be a large figure looming over Taylen and yourself. It stands taller than any of your own kind, yet it does not seem to move. It is something you had not taken notice of earlier, as you charged into the orc camp.

The two orcs lay dead, one beside you, the other nearby your companion. You can neither see nor hear any sign of Twin Moon, nor of the other fellows that had followed you and your companion all this way. A campfire burns nearby, its occasional soft crackle breaking the silence of the moonlit night.

The figure, as you had perceived it, quickly becomes apparent as not a living being at all. Constructed from stone and steel, this immobile obelisk stands a full head taller than you. Four metal rods, one protruding from each side, appear as thin outstretched arms.

[ 07-08-2002: Message edited by: Reyolen ]

"Unlit torch..." he mutters, "They never said it was so simple..."

But he stands, slowly, and begins trudging back to the new light. He raises his voice slightly to carry back over to the camp, but his voice is filled with weariness.

"Save the real torches if you are burning fake ones. And if you want heavy wood, use the little man's axe on a tree. All animals need some rest, and I am one of them."

As you arrive, most of your companions seem to have finally gathered into one place. A glowing sword sits at his feet, lighting up the whole area around him and the others. Ara, or "Ariana" as she has decided to call her new persona, has unrolled her bedding. The beautiful winged girl still sits on the lizardman's shoulder. Both the girl and her large companion appear weary. Aust has sat himself down against a nearby tree, and appears to be nodding off.

Bridge Group

The halfling bursts suddenly through the trees and underbrush, a huge wad of dried leaves clutched between his arm and his chest. His other hand holds the torch that Silvan lit for him a short while ago. Amazingly, none of the dense foliage lining the trail catches fire as he breaks through it.

Silvan turns toward the bridge and moves across the river until he's about as far from the bridge on this side as he was on the last, trying to pick the same type of spot. He motions with his hand for the others to come, and says, "Bring your tinder and wood. Give me the torch. I'll get this camp made, since the rest of you don't seem to feel like it, and then I'll wait for the others by myself if I have to."