Current events

From Ardesia

[edit] Autumn, Queen's Year 103

• The Queen has issued a proclamation extending amnesty to all witches who answer her call to service.
• A reward of 100 in gold has been offered for anyone who can give the location of a lost iron mine to the Crown. Furthermore, title to the land has been offered to anyone who can reclaim a lost iron mine in the name of the Queen and return it to production.
• Rumours of an army massing in one of the Wayfound States have surfaced. Some say a coup is imminent, others say a civil war is brewing. A few whisper that a war of expansion is on the horizon.
• Farmsteads near the Fens are being abandoned before the harvest, raising concerns of famine over the winter.
• The Royal Dragons recently seized a stock of ancient steel weapons and stranger artifacts. Where they came from varies with the teller: Someone unearthed them in the Barrows; They were imported from distant lands; They were found in the cellars of an old building. The Dragons have the stockholder in custody; alternatively, it was abandoned and they're looking for the missing owner.
• A notable number of engineers have closed up shop and left Dragon Falls over the past year. Someone heard from a friend of one of the recent departees that they had "business at High Castle, but don't spread it around." One of them was sighted with a new shop in Rook's Hollow.
• An entire mining camp went missing a month back in the hills of the Spine. Most add that it was "into thin air"; a less common version of the rumour says that there were normal traces of a camp packed up and moved, only that it apparently moved to nowhere.
• The monks of the Minoman Temple have just acquired an odd dream crystal. I know one of the cooks, and he told me.
• Shepherds have reported seeing something stalking across the heath of the Briarwind Hills; one goatherd says some slavering thing came sniffing around his hut during the dark of the moon and vanished into the night. Hunting parties have been gathered and the Royal Dragons fetched, but trackers could find no trace. Though reportedly fierce and menacing the flocks, quieter gossips murmur that no-one seems to know anyone personally that has lost any of their flock.
• A strange ship docked at Farmarsh a few weeks ago. Tall, Wide-beamed, and deep-keeled, it's unlike any Coster or Tayelan ship.