New Halfwood

A blue-jacket loyalist settlement being raised in the great woods on the name of the massacred Old Halfwood, by the aged ex-warrior Thanhold. A day's whimsical travel from the old ruins, it is the "scary militia" the druid Clover kept avoiding — in fact the Orathi "good guys," heirs of the soldiers who "fell red" defending the original town. Guarded by woodland scouts who scoped the party long before they arrived.

Session 45

• Reached by Clover's path. Clover leads the party here by an "incredibly convoluted," backtracking route that eats most of a day, emerging from the woods at evening to be immediately accosted by blue-jacket scouts.
• The welcome. A frosted-blonde young scout halts them; the scout-leader Hollander and a one-eyed lantern-bearer escort them in past a flower-girl (~12, bouquets a copper a bunch) and the trinket peddler Tony — whose coat, to Fenric's magic-sight, holds nine minor magic items and one legendary-glowing one.
• Thanhold. The settlement's patron, a lean ~70s nobleman and former warrior who fought in the original battle of Halfwood ~40 years ago, bows the party in: "the purveyor of this settlement to be constructed… land title owner of what will be New Halfwood." At the words "Old Halfwood" every soldier in earshot bares their head in mourning.
• The corpsewalker report. The session ends as Thalia tells Thanhold of the undead in the woods; he compliments the party's pyre-wisdom and offers to send men. The party hopes the settlement is also a lead on the undead source and Clover's lost elder.
• (Scout/soldier names — "Ailendyr"/"Ailendyras," "Hollander"/"Holland" — are unsettled; one collides with the Session-13 Ailendyras. See Canon Questions.)

Session 46

• A camp with problems. Explored by night, the settlement proves to be a knot of rival blue-jacket factions (one drilling in lines, one in a circle), a guerrilla detail "waging war on the capital," supply-guards, scouts, and a serious food crisis — its food was conjured by the missing druid Stunghelm Elkheart and handed out by the camp mage Humphrey, who can't conjure food himself.
• The cliffside camp. A darker upper tier where the hardened veterans camp — the burned war-vet Golgain (who fought the original Old Halfwood massacre), the whittling survivor Stefan, and the silent, deadly Grey Man, an undead-slayer who predates the blight by 150 years.
• The undead, by the numbers. Golgain sources the blight to a woods necromancer ~1 year ago, north-west — not Old Halfwood — and the bitten here wear a neck X-tattoo (burn the body on death). Thalia's scan reads 200–300 undead in the six-mile hex, far denser than before.
• Crisis resolved. The party finds Stunghelm Elkheart on the road and brings him back into play; he conjures a haul of great-berries that feeds the camp ~4 weeks (the vet Borgish carries them home).

Session 48

• Reward and reunion. The party returns via Stunghelm Elkheart's Tree-Stride to collect its due. Clover is reunited with her elder; the mage Humphrey pays out the reward (162g 8s, chosen over a noble title in New Halfwood); Tony shows off three new trinkets; and Songbird the water nymph joins the party.
• Thanhold's vision. Founder Thanhold lays out the settlement's future — building "something worth protecting," the coming fights over which church domains get to settle (a possible swap from the Church of the Witches to the fire religion), and a hoped-for trade pact with the party's own planned town. He also revives the old question of King Aethelric's betrayer.