Location: Eastern Trade Road / Academy Approach
Date/Time: 15 Ashwhisper, 9938 AZI
Realm: Lower Realm
The caravan had doubled in size.
What had started as twelve wagons and forty-odd souls straggling through Ironspine Pass had become a proper column — twenty-eight wagons now, nearly a hundred people, strung along the Eastern Trade Road like beads on a thread that got longer every time they passed through a town. Most of the newcomers were young. Academy-bound, judging by the cultivation manuals clutched in white-knuckled hands and the wide-eyed expressions of teenagers who'd never been more than a day's walk from home.
Tactical note: column has lost cohesion. Travel speed reduced by thirty percent. Defensive capability marginally improved by additional bodies, significantly degraded by lack of discipline. Approximately sixty percent of new arrivals are below Flamewrought tier. Liabilities in combat.
(They're just kids going to school.)
Yes. That too.
