This place is CURSED – bridges and roads that lead nowhere – tracks that stop abruptly at marshland eager to swallow you, boots and all – even the ancient road seems washed out after barely an hour's rain, as if it can't stand any of the constructions here, now or in the past. Weaver's Fen – ha! The Marsh is naught else but a great spider, its web the swamp itself – no wonder we've lost so many caravans to this place, and we're likely to lose dozens more.\n\nIf not for the oil, one would not care at all – and to us, it hardly seems worth it to suffer the Fen's dangers if we're unlikely to ever have a home here.

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This Cursed Place

Jacoby asked about the red swirls in the marsh, and we enlightened the fool – it's where the Corrupted got riddled with rifles or felled by axes, and their blood soaked the marsh. Not all of it, to be sure, there's settler blood, too, and the Fen was thick with it - we told him be on his guard or the Fen would drink deep of his blood as well.\n\nIt didn't seem to kill the gleam in his eye, though – he'll see different if we get close to the Corrupted's old fort, and see if he likes wearing boots dyed with blood of the marsh. It's a small blessing that settlers older than us pushed the bastards back to the Cleave, for I doubt we'd have the soldiers to do it today, especially now that the Queensport Union got struck by the Cleave's heel when they got too bold. There's a lesson there, and Jacoby had best heed it before he gets ideas of claiming land that isn't his.

Blood

We came upon a leather sack off the road, and Jacoby eagerly searched it, becoming quite disappointed when all within was herbs and food. He asked who might have dropped it - and when we made mention of the witch, Jacoby's eyes grew wide – he cast the herbs into the muck and became agitated, stomping about, urging us to leave until I finally cuffed him.\n\n“Our Hazel's not to be feared,” I told him once his ears stopped ringing. “Been at the isle longer than us, and that good woman's done more to help us than any.” I nodded at the sack. “She leaves those, not as warnings, not as curses, but supplies for those in need of food or healing, as it's easy to get lost in the Fen.”\n\nI let that sink in, and when he grumbled that he wouldn't accept ‘any witch's poison', I nodded at the herbs in the muck. “Now, now – put those in your mouth and chew it. Might be poison, as you say. Or it might taste like your pride. Either one might cure that lack of sense of yours.”

The Gift

An uneasy peace governs the Fen, some say – as if we had a choice.\n\nThe Corrupted continue to infest the marsh, and grow bolder by the day. We hack at them like stubborn roots, and for what? They will soon outnumber us – and then harvest us as we harvest the Fen.\n\nWhat use is a trading company, or any company at all, if we cannot protect ourselves and those in our charge? Yet still we go about our shallow business – we fish, trade oil and linen from our stores, a clockwork life while a hammer waits to fall on us.\n\nThe glorious “Weaver's Fen Company” indeed! Fish scales and fish guts shall be a poor shield against the evils of this isle.

An Uneasy Peace

“Leave them be and they shall leave us be,” is the prayer of the fools in the forts. They ignore the empty homes in the Fen, and focus on the ease of life on the peninsula as if the Fen is not a stone's throw away. Other prayers are more foolish, “the Witch has lived here ages,” they say, “and she survived.” Yet when I ask the same fools to draw a map to her home and how anything or anyone might find it, let alone attack it, they grow quiet and return to their cups.\n\nIf we will not help ourselves, we must find others who will. I have heard tales of a union at Queensport, a collection of companies who have banded together to protect the isle. It will be a hard task to convince those of the Fen to welcome any government or army, but I fear if we wait for the Corrupted to convince us, there will be little left to protect.

Ignorance is not Comfort

A Queensport Officer was in the Fen outpost. I took this opportunity to test his convictions, though in a circular fashion. He answered honestly, even disagreed with me when I claimed the Corrupted in the Fen did not trouble us overmuch.\n\n“I do not want to tell others how to live their lives, but the Corrupted do not let others live – they prey on them, and descend like locusts. Where there is one, you can be sure there are others. It is for this reason we have decided to form the union at Queensport.”\n\nI asked if Queensport might “lower” themselves to help the simple people of the Fen, and he grew even more serious. “We must help each other. Even if I were not of the Queensport union, it is the duty of every living soul on Aeternum. The isle a gift, but that does not mean we must not fight for it.”\n\nThe man's name was Rutherford. I asked if he would speak to the Weaver's Company, and he agreed. What comes of it, I do not know.

A Helping Hand

Rutherford's inquiry fell upon deaf ears. As expected, the Weaver's Company – or their drunk representatives, more like - did not wish to stir up trouble with the Corrupted. “What gain is had in antagonizing them? They do not harm us if we leave them be.”\n\n“Have you seen a brother… a sister… a mother, a wife, among the Corrupted?” Rutherford asked. He was calm, but his tone was sharpest at ‘wife'. “I have. I am certain even in Weaver's Fen you have seen it, fellow countrymen who now walk hunched, their skin shriveled, yet a devil's light in their eyes.” Many of the representatives fell silent at this – yet one became angry. “What of it? They were weak – what little faith they had, failed them.”\n\n“No,” Rutherford responded quietly. “You did.”

Nothing from Queensport

The talks persisted, angrily and uselessly. The representatives wanted nothing to do with Queensport, but their arguments bore little reason. Every helping hand, every calm word was slapped away or scorned.\n\n“And what price is your ‘Queensport assistance'?” The representatives demanded of Rutherford. “A tithe? Taxes? All we left the mainland to put behind us?!”\n\n“There is a tax, yes, for maintenance of the roads, to assist in trade… and to assist each other. But most of all, I offer you our swords, our rifles, and our friendship. That is what will keep the Corrupted from the door.”\n\n“You think we cannot protect our own,” the representatives challenged.\n\n“No single company can,” Rutherford replied. “Even us. And that is why I am here now. You are not asking for our help, we are asking for yours.”

Weaver's Company Log Chapter - NWGuide Database of Lore

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