“Not bad,” Fabien said. “When you said they had a small library, I imagined maybe 2 or 3 bookshelves in a tiny room. This is quite a lot actually.”

“The first floor is mostly for the mundane reading materials,” Regis pointed out. “Magic related stuff starts on the second floor. All of the barriers of down, so you will be able to search around to your heart's content if sir Derris doesn’t mind.”

“Not at all, as long as they treat the books carefully.”

“I guess that’s the map you wanted us to see.” Sophie pointed at the lambskin on the wall across the room.”

“That’s the one,” Osmond nodded. “It’s supposed to have all the settlements marked on it along with the main trade and travel routes.”

“Now we just have pick one for the taking.” Cruz concluded as she walked closer to the map.

“It’s best if we pick one of the settlements that have been crossed out.”

“Why?” Sophie asked as she took a closer look at the drawing.

“They are supposed to be long abandoned settlements, which means that they should have less attention on them.”

“But if they were abandoned even before the war,” Valerie spoke up. “That would mean that the buildings themselves would be all dilapidated.”

“What’s the point of taking over some old ruined village?” Khan asked as he eyed the larger settlement markings of the map. “With the situation being this bad all around the country, we could easily take over a town like East Fork. We could just roll in there like a bunch of saviours, clearing the place of the fallen and become its rulers.”

“We’re aiming for an abandoned settlement because it’s safer,” Osmond sighed. “From what we know, this war only took out a good chunk of the local small nobles’ forces along with a bunch of commoners and such. The real players such as the royals and the high nobles are still present. Do you really think they will just watch it without lifting a finger as we take over a place along the important trading routes?”

“But we have five second tier shardwakers in our group and the rest of the team should be able to tier up by the time we cleared this town.” Khan argued.

“And they likely have a bunch of tier threes,” Cruz scoffed. “The one thing I learnt back on Earth is that you don’t mess with the nobles unless you have an overwhelming strength. And besides; the last time I checked we were able to to fix up buildings ourselves through magic as long as they’re not completely ruined.”

“Okay,” Quentin stepped in. “Let’s all calm down and talk things over seriously. This is a big decision and we all have to be in on this one.”

“Let’s start crossing out the obvious bad choices,” Regis spoke up. “It can’t be a place that’s along the main trade routes. That would make it too important for the higher-ups to give up.”

“I can only see a few village names crossed out along the main routes, so that would only cut off about a dozen places across the whole Kingdom at most.” Letty noted.

“Let’s lower the search area,” Osmond stated. “We don’t really have the means and time to travel across the entire country, so we should focus on this part of it.”

“There are plenty of crosses along the river branches and the roads,” Sophie followed the lines of the map with her fingers. “There’s still almost three dozen choices to pick from.”

“It has to be well defendable,” Quentin shared his thoughts. “If we picked some random village without even a proper fence then we’d have to put in a ridiculous amount of effort to make it habitable and safe.”

“Okay,” Amanda sighed. “Small villages are out of the question then. Can you tell us anything that would help sir Derris?”

“Let me check,” the old scholar muttered as he turned the pages of a ledger he brought back from one of the shelves while the group was talking. “If we only look at this part of the Kingdom and leave out the small villages that were abandoned, that would leave three forts, five outposts, two small towns, a valley duchy and a mining settlement that ran out of resources.”

“That’s still quite a lot,” Fabien sighed as they looked towards the map.

“The mining settlement is out of the question,” Osmond stated. “The only thing that would have made it a viable choice would have been the resources of the mine, but since that’s gone, it would be pointless to take that one over.”

“What about the valley duchy?”

“The Thorn Vale Duchy belonged to the Lorne family,” elder Derris pointed at a hole in the mountainous area of the kingdom. “It was granted to the family by King Samson the second almost two and a quarter centuries ago due to the Lorn family head’s military services, raising the family from their mid noble status to a high noble one. The valley has a recorded territory of territory of twenty five thousand acres.”

“Twenty-five K acres,” Fabien began to do the math. “That’s what, a hundred square kilometres?”

“Somewhere around that,” Quentin nodded. “That’s a lot of land.”

“A lot of abandoned land,” Osmond interjected. “People don’t just simply abandon a duchy without a reason. What happened to it?”

“Well,” Derris cleared his throat. “There are some official records and then there are the rumours. If we go by the official records, then the duchy was abandoned due to two reasons. The the first one is that it was very hard to reach it. As you can see on the map, it is completely surrounded by the mountains with only a single entrance.”

“That entrance being a river, right?” Amanda pointed at the line that ran through the area there was supposed to be Thorn Vale.

“Yes,” the old scholar nodded. “It is one of the small river ways that eventually connect into the Eastern river that you used to get here. Judging by the records, they managed to carve out a large enough space from the mountain wall beside the river for carts to travel through and cut a road through the forests and marshes, but it was still hard to travel there.”

“Why didn’t they simply create a teleport gateway?” Regis asked.

“The head of the Lorne family was a knight that seemed to be at odds with the spell casters of that era.”

“So no one was willing to make one for them,” Cruz concluded. “What’s the second reason?”

“Their Landwaker tree died out not long after it was planted.”

“Okay,” Osmond sighed. “Those are the official records. What about the rumours?”

“The rumours are a tad bit more interesting,” the elderly scholar said as he sat down. “If the stories are true, then the only reason king Samson bestowed that land on the Lorne family was the keep them as far from the royal court as possible.”

“But why?” Sophie couldn’t stop herself from asking the important question.

“It happened after a small war between the kingdom and the mountain people, where the head of the Lorne family distinguished himself through his combat prowess at the cost of humiliating the prince of the kingdom. King Samson had no no official reason the punish the knight…”

“So he found a way to do it it through rewarding him.” Quentin concluded.

“The king gave him the most reclusive piece of land of the kingdom and made sure that not only would the Lorne family not have access to the gateways, but also got to poison their Landwaker tree when it was still easy to harm it. Once the Lorne family had to leave their newly bestowed land, they got ambushed and killed by bandits. Thorn Vale was then erased from pretty much every map of the kingdom. We only know about it because this map was supposedly made a year prior to the events.”

“They banished him under the pretence of rewarding him for his effort,” Regis frowned. "Then they went ahead and poisoned their Landwaker to booth."

"A poisoned Landwaker is a death sentence for anyone," Letty sighed. "Not to mention the damage it could cause in the land. The royals really are a bunch of bastards.”

“They always were,” the old scholar agreed. “I guess you want to turn your attention towards the remaining choices then.”

“We should cross out any place that’s deep in the marshes or swamps as well,” Khan said immediately. “It would be hard to expand or even just to keep up a place in a stinking swamp.”

“Agreed.” The rest of the group nodded at the suggestion.

“If we leave out any settlement residing in the marshes that would leave you with two outposts and a fort.” Sir Derris said as he skipped through the ledger.

“So we are down to three choices,” Amanda sat down on the bench beside the long table. “That makes things a lot easier.”

“The fort of Birch Gates lies not too far from here towards the west. It was is built at the area where the large birch forest begins.”

“Why was it abandoned?” Quentin turned the conversation towards the important details.

“It was recorded to have been besieged by the bandits fleeing to the birch forest not long after the second Marsh Wars. Since the fort was scarcely manned due to most of them being recalled to aid the war effort, the place was almost completely destroyed by the overwhelming number of bandits and deserters.”

“And no one wanted to reclaim it until now?”

“It wasn’t an important place,” Derris stated. “And the birch forest has no rare resources that would make it valuable enough for anyone to try and claim it.”

“So if we go there, we’d only get some old ruins and nothing else,” Valerie deduced. “What’s next?”

“Easter River Outpost is up along the second river way splitting from East Fork. It is somewhat remote with no earth road leading to it, so you would only be able to travel through the river way.”

“How big is it?” Cruz asked.

“The outpost was recorded to have a central tower, a small barracks, a few small side buildings with some farm plots.”

“In other words,” Fabien sighed. “It’s little more then a riverside village that had a garrison. Any notable resources in the area?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t find anywhere else.”

“Then we should hear out the last place as well.” Sophie joined in to the conversation.

“The last one on the list is Red Clay Outpost. As it’s name suggests, it was built in an area rich in red clay. It was abandoned after a plague struck that killed nearly every person and animal living there.”

Here the old scholar stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts before continuing on.

“While the official records say that it was a plague, there were rumours that dark magic was involved. Most likely they raised the ire of someone they shouldn’t have.”

“How well developed was the outpost when this happen?” Regis asked while he kept staring at the map.

“The incident happened a bit over a century ago. As for the outpost; it was roughly the same as the river outpost I told you about.”

“Except this one has abundant red clay around it.” Fabien reminded them.

“That and a road used for travelling.” The old scholar added.

“I guess we know all of our choices now.” Valerie sighed.

“If you could call those choices,” Cruz rolled her eyes. “All I heard about about was just a bunch of ruins with a shitload of skeletons left in them.”

“Like it or not,” Quentin spoke up. “This is all we have for now unless you want to try taking over some small town and risk the ire of the nobles and the royals.”

“It will take a lot of work to fix any of those places up,” Sophie stated the obvious. “But everyone here has magic and we all know the spell of lesser mending. If we work together we should be able to do this.”

“That’s the spirit,” Amanda patted her friend on the shoulder. “Now we just have to pick one.”

“Birch fort is out,” Osmond stated out. “Forest fortresses are almost always made out of wood. It had likely already rotted away after being demolished by the bandits. We would have to rebuild it from the ground up and that would take too much time and effort.”

“So we only have to pick between the outpost at the river and the one near the clay place.”

“Travelling by the river would be hard upstream but easier downstream, it would also require us to row about every time we wanted to go somewhere unless we get a gateway of our own, but the ordinary traders will still avoid us like fire.” Cruz expressed her thoughts.

“That leaves Red Clay Outpost. It’s not right on the trade routes, but close enough to be reachable with a slight detour. That red clay also has to be of some use if people would be willing to build an outpost there just for the stuff.” Regis said as he turned toward his companions, expressing his opinions.

“I doubt we have better alternatives for now, so I’m down with it.” Amanda stated.

“Red Clay it is.” Quentin nodded in agreement with the others following soon enough.

“It seems you have made your decision,” old Derris close the book he was holding. “I sincerely hope that you will succeed laying claim at the territory of Red Clay.”

“Thank you,” the paladin said. “And we also thank you for your help in the matter.”

“There’s no need,” the elderly scholar waved it away. “I’m sure you youngsters have your plans for the place and it will be nice to have some life return to the outpost. Still, the sun is about to set. I think it's time to show you your rooms for tonight.”

“Sound good,” Regis agreed before turning back toward his friends. “Once we’re done with that, could you guys help me drag some of the stuff we looted into the enchanters’ room?”

“Are you going to pull another all-nighter?” Sophie looked at the dark elf worried. “You should really get some proper rest while you can. We don’t know how long we’ll be on the road without a decent bed.”

“I’ll try not to overdo it,” he promised. “But we managed to grab a lot of new gear and I’m pretty sure most of you will switch at least half of your current equipment.”

Everyone nodded in acknowledgment as they thought about the higher quality arms and armour they scavenged from their defeated enemies.