Rolfe Hawthorne prepared the gift for us to deliver to the Sylph, then we were on our way. On arrival, we found we were not permitted to see the elder. Despite the gift of milkroot we brought and indulging in the Sylphic love for dance, things seemed rather tense in the village of Little Solace and most of the Sylph had little more than hostility for us and for Gridania. Their representative that they sent to us in place of their elder was a particularly hostile Sylph named Komuxio.
We were not completely without ideas thankfully. We were shortly joined by two more representatives from the Scions, Yda and Papalymo, who are the primary contacts between the Scions and the peoples of the Black Shroud. Yda proposed we simply attempt to make friends with all of the Sylph and see if any would be willing to talk. Thus we scattered around the village to dance for every Sylph we could find and see if the plan would succeed.
For a blessing, we did find several Sylph more than happy to talk with us, though not yet willing to share why precisely the Sylph village as a whole seemed far more hostile than expected. Papalymo proposed the next course of action – discussing with a local Hearer who regularly aids the Sylph. We were able to find Hearer Imedia with little trouble, and they directed us to a few sources of trouble that had been plaguing the Sylph. We scattered once again, some of us to fight beasts and others to gather local plants that the Sylph make regular use of.
This seemed to do the trick. Once we delivered the plants (which we learned are known as “brownie bushes” and used for producing dyes) and informed the Sylph of how we slew the monsters plaguing them, they warmed up to us, particularly Komuxio.
With the trust of the Sylph in hand, Komuxio finally informed us why they have been so tense. It seems the Garleans have been making moves into the forest, killing Sylphs and harming the forest as they go. We were still not permitted to meet the elder, but we were given tasks to investigate the Garlean activity and try to push them back out. Blessedly, the Garleans were not prepared to be attacked and were not hard to push back out. As they fled, they left behind paperwork which we handed over to Komuxio to start figuring out their plans.
Our next task was to find a missing Sylph named Claxio. They were not hard to track down thanks to spools of thread they dropped on their way, but they still did not trust us and fled deeper into the forest before coming into contact with the “Touched Ones”. We were informed by Komuxio before we set out on our search that these “Touched Ones” are Sylph who had been tempered by past summonings of their primal god Ramuh. Sadly we had no choice but to put down the Touched Ones to save Claxio from their assault.
On our return to Little Solace, Komuxio seemed as though they had something they wished to tell us but was nevertheless uncertain. At this, we were dismissed and told that the Sylph had no further tasks for us, but to return in a few suns once they had had time to consider things. While none of us were pleased to leave a job unfinished, we agreed to head back to the city for now with Papalymo and Yda remaining behind to contact us via linkpearl if something happens. At the very least, we felt confident that we had at least shown the Sylph of Little Solace that the Gridanians had good intentions and the risk of a summoning of Ramuh was unlikely for now.
