Image Created By AI
OOC - Author's Note:
This entry recounts a live RP session which revolved around the IC introduction of new player characters to the Company of the East Road - open to all. It is part of a chronicle aimed to be weekly called "Signs Along the Road". If you would like to join the Company and use this RP hook to do so, please reach out to Naridalis.
This session was held on 8th June 2025 | The next session was held on 15th June 2025 and you can read that here. | A quicklink to the previous session can be found: here.
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
“Tell the Ones Who Walk the Road”
The hill above Nobottle was quiet when I lit the fire, low flames, smoke curling soft into the morning air. I did not expect company. Yet the road is never truly empty.
Caramach was the first to arrive… a hobbit with dust on his boots and a careful way of looking at the world, as though he'd seen too many things and learned to speak lightly of them. He smiled as he approached, called himself "Mac", and settled beside the fire like it was a place he’d known in another life. There is something in him…. a restlessness not born of youth, but of having stayed too long in the wrong places perhaps...
Garibald came next. A river-hobbit, as he made plain, and one with steady hands and a quiet voice. He spoke not to fill the air, but because he had something worth saying. I saw no fear in him, even when the talk turned grim. He reminded me of the water he came from; still on the surface, strong underneath.
Then Heligin arrived. That did surprise me. I had thought him well-anchored in Bree, wrapped in apron and laughter and the scent of warm spice – always cooking with purpose. Yet there he was, walking with us. And though he said little at first, I could feel the weight of his presence. A man who listens with care is often more valuable than one who acts without it.
I welcomed them all, as I would any traveller who comes with clear eyes and an open will. But I did not hide the truth: something was wrong in Nobottle. Livestock vanished. A peddler named ‘Welly’ had gone missing seemingly without a trace. A note, nailed to a chicken coop, speaking of red eyes and watching darkness had been found. The Bounders had dismissed it… gossip, they said. Nothing to trouble over - fae stories, fireside nonsense, the wanderings of a drunkard.
But I have walked through enough half-believed stories to know that truth often wears a cloak of foolishness, until the blood shows.
And there would indeed be blood.
---
We came down from the hill as the morning wore thin, the hush of Nobottle ahead of us like the pause before a word you do not wish to hear spoken. The village was still. Not silent, no place in the Yondershire is ever is truly silent, but still, in that uneasy way one feels before a storm breaks. The bounders moved about in small clusters, chatting idly and looking everywhere except the ground.
Then we saw the cart.
I crouched to study the ground. There was no sign of a struggle. No footprints suggesting a fight or flight. Just the faint indentations where something, or someone, had walked away from the wreck. Away from the village. Away from the cart.
Caramach spoke first, half-hopeful, suggesting Welly may have gone to fetch help. He looked at the scene with the eyes of someone who wants the world to be explainable. I don’t fault him for that. Garibald said little, but I saw his gaze tracking the same lines mine did. He was already thinking ahead.
Heligin noted the cart was intact and asked about the contents. I gave him the answer plainly: simple goods. Honest trade. The sort of wares that could fit a dozen village fairs, none of them remarkable. Enough to make a living, but not enough to be killed for.
Garibald made the point I’d hoped someone would. Bandits don’t leave coin behind. They don’t walk away from plunder, not when they’ve risked steel for it. That, at least, confirmed what I had begun to suspect. This was no theft gone wrong.
I pointed out the tracks then…. subtle, but clear once you knew to look. They led away from the cart, toward the river, into the reeds and beyond. That detail caught their attention. Hobbits are not born for tracking, but they understand the weight of a misplaced step when it leads out of bounds.
Heligin spoke of pubs, of drink, of foolish accidents. I entertained the thoughts, lightly. It is easy to dismiss what one fears with laughter and small comforts. But I had already seen the truth writ beneath the soil, faint as it was.
The cart was not a scene of confusion. It was a door. And Welly had passed through it. Alone.
So we followed. Most of us, Heligin would check the nearby tavern for any signs… though I thought I saw a flicker in his eyes as he mentioned it…
---
The trail from the cart led us eastward, down a slope of tangled grass and soft earth. I walked ahead, slow-footed, eyes searching the places others forget to look. Caramach and Garibald followed close behind. Each were quiet in their own way, as only hobbits could be, though the silence felt heavier the further we went.
The river soon came into view. It ran broad and fast, swollen by spring rains, its voice never quite still; hissing through reeds, lapping at the roots of old trees. It is not the sort of river one crosses lightly, nor one that gives back what it takes.
Near the edge, beneath the bent branches of a leaning willow, we found the blood.
Just a smear at first, rusted red, half dried into the bark of an exposed root… but enough to mark the moment something terrible had passed this way. Not an accident. Not a scraped knee. Someone had bled here, and more than they could spare.
I knelt beside it and asked the others what they made of it. Garibald, ever thoughtful, wondered aloud if Welly had fallen in. Caramach looked grim, he had heard of a waterfall downstream and said, with a kind of practical dread, that if Welly had entered the river here, it might have been the end of him.
I asked if either of them could swim. Garibald nodded, his river-hobbit blood making that question a light one. Caramach wisely said no, and I thanked him for his caution. It was not said as jest. Wisdom is often knowing what not to do.
Then I told them of the mill.
I had passed through this region once before, years ago. There was an old watermill along the lower bend. I reasoned, if Welly had entered the water, alive or not, the current might have taken him there. And if he had not, we might still find what had followed him.
---
We made our way along the river’s edge, the daylight thinning with each step. I lit a torch as the first stars began to blink into view above the hills. Shadows stretched long across the ground. The wind shifted. None of us spoke much.
Then the mill came into sight. Slouched against the far bank, its great wheel still turning, slow and half-rotted in the current. The timbers leaned as though tired of holding their shape, and moss clung thick around its base.
There were no bridges. Just a line of wide, moss-slicked stones that crossed the river like a broken necklace.
I paused before stepping out. The stones were treacherous, and the river unforgiving. But the trail led on, and so must we.
One by one, we crossed.
Boots slick with river-mud, we reached the mill. I approached the side wall first, where the reeds grew thick and tangled. It was there I found the second trail of blood… darker than the first, and older, but no less troubling. This was not a fresh wound spilt. It was a body dragged.
Inside the mill, I could see through dusty windows, signs of disuse had settled like old breath. The floor did not look disturbed. A trail had been carved through the dirt outside though - a path where something large, or lifeless, had been pulled from one end to the other.
We followed it beyond the back door, where the hill behind seemed to rise into the night sky.
Garibald said he had a bad feeling. I did not disagree.
The grass was broken in places. The earth still soft from spring. We climbed the hill in silence, step by step, toward the end of the trail, and whatever waited at the top.
---
The air atop the hill was still, heavier than it had been by the water, as though the land itself was holding its breath.
We stepped into the tall grass one by one, and even the hobbits said little. Garibald’s gaze was sharp and uneasy. Caramach’s usual cheek was quieted, tucked away behind the furrow of his brow.
At the top, over by the trees in the even longer grass, we found Welly.
Or what was left of him…
He had been dragged through the muck and left there, torn and twisted in a way no natural creature should do. Half-buried in a thicket of broken branches, one arm still clutching the strap of his satchel, though the rest of him... was not whole. What remained of his body had been gnawed, his face turned toward the sky, as though he had died looking up, asking why.
I did not let the others linger on the sight.
I asked, gently, if one of them would check the satchel. My mind preoccupied with scanning the perimeter… where we safe here?
Caramach stepped back, and I did not blame him. It was Garibald who moved forward, kneeling with a kind of solemn care that made me understand why he had come on this road to begin with.
Inside the satchel were a few cracked trinkets, a bundle of cloth, some dried herbs and pipeweed… most of it intact. And at the bottom: a letter.
Water-stained. Curling at the edges. Penned in a shaking hand.
Garibald read it aloud.
It was addressed to Welly.
So we knew at least, that this was indeed him.
But there was something else… a second letter… written by Welly…
… he had... known?
He had seen the red eyes. He had felt the thing that watched him. He wrote of the hedgerows, of the silence, of the hunger that had no shape… only presence. He knew what followed him, and he knew he would not outrun it.
“Tell the ones who walk the road,” he had written.
And so we had come. But too late…
I folded the letters with care and placed it back into the satchel. There was nothing else to recover. Not truly.
We did not find a beast waiting in the grass. No warg leapt at us from the hilltop. But the signs were there. The blood. The trail. The torn flesh and silence. Something had fed here. Something wild, or worse.
But it was gone now, nearest my sense could tell at least…
Caramach was the first to speak, quiet but thoughtful. He had seen such things before, he said, on the road. He spoke not like one frightened, but one deciding. He said he might walk with us, to learn a few things… perhaps offer something in return.
Garibald followed. His words were fewer, but they held more weight. He said our purpose was his own: to help where help was needed. To go where others would not.
I welcomed them both.
There was no need for ceremony. Only the walking forward.
I looked out across the hill and the quiet village below. The bounders would return to their rounds. The folk would close their shutters, and the red eyes would become just another tale told over cider on stormy nights.
But we would remember.
And the Company would remember.
Because if we do not walk these roads… if we do not watch where others will not… then the next Welly will vanish without even a name left in the grass.
And still, the red eyes will watch.
[The stories continue in future "Signs Along the Road"]
