Status Report July 993
Strider Al’Terra 1st commission, Silverthorne
I have just arrived in Tucor after a long and arduous overland trek from Brax. The seaside weather was pleasant and the road maintained, but the sharp seaside stones were quite hard on the boots. The terrain around Tucor continues to be a sharp shale, much like that found in more mountainous regions.
Vegetation here is sparse. People far more so. The land seems to be all brown. I find myself thinking that nothing could be worse than being forced to farm in these salty barrens. True the fens and brackens are not that bad, but I shouldn’t like the emptiness and the desolation.
Located on the southern shore of the Inner Sea, Tucor is the last bastion before entering the forest en route to Mordin. Barren landscape and an ailing member of the nobility contribute to this deserted baronies lack of appeal. The bracken to the south of town provides little game and little tillable soil. A few farmers still eek an existence from the tired soil, but most of the townsfolk earn their living by catering to the sailors and merchants who pass through on their travels to and from Susspin and Vaunephasauk.
Significant people include the elderly baron James Vari’il. He is a kindly old man if gradually becoming senile and little remembers the deaths of his children in that boating accident a few years ago. He now calmly awaits his own time, with a smile and a genteel wave to his townsfolk.
When I asked a farmer about the desolation and the depression which seems to exist throughout Tucor he spat and muttered something about the ‘worms at the gates.’ It was only when I rose early one morning to see gate guards casting flaming brands upon the moving masses in the streets that I truly understood.
Tucor is plagued by a rare species of worm which lives off of roots and plant fibers. The creatures then spin enormous nests of coarse threaded fibers. While these fibers are exceptionally useful for the manufacture of sails and other hardy materials, they are nearly useless for comfortable clothing. The worms also seem to devour the crops quite rapidly, resulting in the near starvation of most of the peasant population of Tucor.
I recommend that whenever traveling near Tucor, you avoid sleeping on the ground at all costs. The swamps and rocks which surround this town’s outlying farms provide a boundary which the worms will not cross, but once within their reach for a night a man can wake up severely scarred. Several of the farmfolk and their children bear the traceries of worm bites.