Editing Setting:InfiniCon/Lore (section)

==The Forest==
''Anonymous''

It was a clear night, maybe a little too cold but we didn’t really care about that. We had a big enough fire and enough mead to last until morning. That was one of the reasons the Sergeant kicked us out of the camp. Well, technically he kicked out us from the camp because we were too loud and they wanted to get some sleep, but I think you can figure out the whole story.

Regardless, the Sergeant said that if we eight were awake, we might as well be on guard duty. So we came out into the middle of the field, which were next to our camp and spent the night there, drinking mead, telling jokes and stories, having a good time. Ivan was in the middle of one of his horror stories about what kind of “elves” they had back in Russia, when some people came with torches and everything, maybe a dozen of them. First we thought they were from a nearby camp, maybe they needed urgent help against a night raid or maybe they had a secret meeting with the Captain. We didn’t really care about it, I mean we were more or less a neutral mercenary band (and a good one I might add) so there were no reasons to attack us, even less for a bunch of torch wielding commoners. 

As they approached we realized one important thing: they had lamps too. Like electric ones. And that means they were not from the Forest, and not larpers at all. There goes the peaceful night...

As they got close enough that we could see their faces it turned out that they are probably from the Sci-Fi district and most of them are somewhere around they early twenties. Nowhere else could you find such crappy uniforms. At least not all uniforms were the same, there were at least two Trekkies with them, I couldn’t recognize the rest. That’s good, it meant it wasn't another faction who wanted to pick a bone with us, just some random geeks.

"WE WANT THE FURRY!"

One of them shouted. We were so baffled that we just stared at them in silence for a few seconds, I think Tinus even said a quiet “What?”.

"This is not a brothel, get lost."

I answered finally. I would like to say that this angered them but they were pretty much angry already.

"Don’t play dumb! We know you are hiding a furry! If you don’t give us the furry we will call the Enforcers!"

I exchanged looks with the other. They just shrugged.

"Look kid, I honestly don’t know what the fuck are you talking about, so go home, the Forest is dangerous at night."

They did not heed my advice and I think some of them even had a smug look at that warning.

"Oh yeah? Then you deny that there is a person among you who wears a fursuit all day and that you hiding him?"

Meanwhile of this he held up something that looked like a modified smartphone, he probably recorded the whole thing for whatever reason he had.

"Fursuit?"

I was even more baffled now we exchanged looks again and clearly nobody knew what the fuck is going on. But at last Heinrich realized what is this all about.

"Maybe he is talking about Darios?"

"Don’t be an idiot! He is a fucking minotaur not a furry!"

"Well... he did tried to teabag that goblin back then..."

"And “seduced” the drow mistress..."

A raised my arm and made a “cut the shit” gesture then with a huge sigh I slowly stood up from my chair and finally putting down my mead.

"Look, kid. You obviously made a mistake here. The guy you are talking about is not a furry. He is a larper and part of the Brigata, so one of us. Also he is probably sleeping back at the camp."

I tried to put my hand on his shoulder like a friendly gesture but he just stepped away and snapped at me.

"Then raise your camp and throw him in chains before I send all of this to the Enforcers! You already admitted everything!"

I sighed again and gave him the No.2 cityguard look which were reserved for idiots and fools. I don’t really miss my cityguard days...

"I would love to do that but do you see those wooden walls at the camp? And that huge door? It is closed. And we lost the key. Honestly. So we can’t go back either, better wait until morning, get some sleep think it through again and realize your mistakes. It’s not like he fucked your girl or anything important..."

He blushed immediately. Oh fuck, here we go again... Darios will get more than a lecture from the Captain this time.

"I don’t care about you or your excuses. If you don’t bring him out we will BURN down your camp"

Everyone slowly put down their drink and the night grew colder as we looked at the “leader” of this group.

"Listen..."

I started really slowly.

"If you so much as touch that camp we will beat you until you go away. With padded sticks of course because we are generally nice people. But if you even TRY to set anything on fire while here then we will go full medieval on your ass. And just to be sure that you understand: We will impale you and your friends on a fucking maypole and dance around it until we get bored, then leave you there to rot. Now get the fuck out of our Forest!"

After that I turned around to walk back to my chair, and that was the moment when everything went black. Later they told me that smartphone like thing had a tazer in it.

When I regained consciousness I was still a little shaky but missed only a few seconds, maybe half a minute, I don’t know, but my friends already had their share of the fight. A chair lied in pieces on the ground, two more of us on the ground, probably tazed, but four of the sci-fi kids were on the ground to, one of them screaming and his hands on his face, next to on the ground a torch. the rest were knocked out for good.

Thank God that none of us was drunk enough to actually use their real knifes and daggers, so they just used their hands and larp weapons, doing what wasn’t allowed on larps: hitting the head, neck and groin areas and with full force. Padding is a good thing but only if you control yourself which we did not. I grabbed my pollax somehow managed to stand up and entered the fray too, barking a few command to overcome the chaos so we can fight as a real unit. It did not take long until we kicked their asses, but that wasn't such a feat. I mean a bunch of half-drunk larper against a dozen sci-fi wannabe who don’t know shit about fighting? If the Captain would see this he would facepalm so hard that a new forest would grow.

Regardless we were the winners, the uniformed idiots all on the ground some of the moaning, some of them bleeding a little or just grabbing various parts of their body in pain.

"See? This is why you don’t go into a brawl without a polearm."

I said while we smashed to pieces all their gadgets and stomped out their torches. Then I took a closer look on the guy who got the torch into his face. Burned eyebrows, red as crab and he couldn’t open his eyes on his own, but as far as I could tell nothing permanent. Then we poured a little mead on them so even the unconscious ones will awake too, got them on their feet and pointed into the right direction.

"Get out. Don’t come back. If we ever see you again you won’t leave the Forest, not even your dead bodies will."

I’m pretty sure they wanted to say something, but they no longer had the bravery for it. So they just started lurching away, like some kind of zombies.

"Ivan, you know what? Be so good and sprint down to the Goblin Caves and tell them that some “drunken merchants” lost their way in the Forest, and they are under no one's protection. I’m sure they will know what to do..."