fall 1231 the stranger

In the fall of 1231 a stranger- a woman dressed in furs, is seen at various points in the covenant. any time someone yells at her to wait or tries to approach her she darts around the nearest corner and disappears.

The first occurence is during the day or during the evening?

The lilt of a folk tune drifts above the natural hum and chirp of the rise of dawn. The singer no walks along a patch from the covenant kitchens out toward the kitchen garden, holding in one hand a simple wooden bowl covered in a rough, clean cloth. Gretel stops near a planting square dominated by a happily growing rosemary. She runs her free hand along the rosemary's needles before setting the bowl down on flat stone just outside the canopy of the herb. The cook pulls the cloth free, revealing the white of what must be milk in the bowl. She spreads the cloth out near the bowl before pulling two rustic and apparently fresh sweet rolls from a pocket of her apron. Gretel smiles, seemingly content with her morning offering as she calls out softly, in a sing-song chant:

Come my beauties, one and all,
Dawn's bounty sup and sip!
The sun rises soon,
Up to sky's noon;
Come quick, ere dew ends its drip!

Gretel chuckles softly to herself before standing up again and backing quietly away from the offering stone, turning down another row of the garden where the tops of onions can be seen.

Gretel glances back toward the stone a few times, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of her faerie friends, but sets herself to the task of harvesting a few onions for the one or more meals she'll be preparing this day. Once she's gathered a half-dozen, she gathers a few more herbs, and then starts back toward the kitchens.

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Slight modification to the above- Gretel would need to travel outside the aegis if the faeries are going to come and take the offering (or persuade the magi to invite them in!)

She spots a creature the size of a human child but with greenish brown skin and large ears resembling bat wings lapping at the milk.

Accounts vary but the consensus seems to be that she first appeared in the evening.

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Gretel slowly steps partially out from the dew-damp bush she's hiding behind, her eyes on the creature lapping at the milk. She hums her song again, her hands at her side, all her effort on remaining neutral in posture and expression. Gretel says nothing.

The creature looks Gretel over, edges half way towards her and lays a small blue rock on the ground and backs away.

Gretel nods toward the creature before slowing coming forward. She picks up the blue rock and looks at it, turning it over a few times.

as you pick up the blue rock the creature scampers off into the bushes.

Gretel smiles toward the figure and then slides the stone into a pocket of her apron before turning back toward the covenant and her kitchen duties.

When she returns to the covenant proper, well within the bounds of the Aegis and still rather early in the morning, Gretel looks around for any of the magi, particularly any who might have been welcoming to her over the past few seasons.

Gretel can see Anastasia coming into the kitchen to pick up her breakfast shortly after dawn. Seeing that she's been at the covenant for a couple of seasons though, she knows that Anastasia tends to live by night, and that by the morning, she's mostly looking to put something in her stomach and then head to bed, rather than chit chat.

Gretel walks quietly over to Anastasia and bows respectfully.

"Excuse me, milady. Could I bother you with a question?"

Anastasia looks her up "No, you may not bother me, Gretel." after a pause and a smile. "But you may ask."

Gretel's brow furrows for a moment in confusion, but then she nods and reaches into the pocket of her apron.

"I saw this creature this morning when I was out… Uhm. Out gathering herbs and onions. It might be the one people was saying that hey had seen. It left me this rock."

The cook extends her hand with the blue rock in it toward Anastasia.

"Is it something special?"

Anastasia will pick up the blue rock and examine it for a moment.

Per+Comprehend Magic check of 23.
Int+Magic lore check at 13

You are able to determine that it is a faerie glamour, laid over a perfectly ordinary rock, and not truly magical, and that it will harvest vitality from effort spent trying to investigate it, but beyond that it seems to have no function.

Anastasia chuckles. "That seems to be a faerie's way of attracting attention." She pauses a moment "You say this faerie was seen on covenant ground? Was she within the aegis, somehow?"

"No, milady. Well, I don't think so. I think I've got the rights of where that boundary is," answers Gretel with a thoughtful press of hands down her apron. "There's a bit of a spot I have out there near some wild onions and rosemary. A flat rock where I sometimes make my offerings to the little ones. Fresh milk and a bit of baking. Maybe a sweet. They won't be comin' past that boundary." The cook shrugs.

"She's not but the size of a child by the look of her. Her skin green and brown with some right large ears like a bat's ears. She liked the milk, she did."

OOC: I'm a bit confused and asking for clarification from the gamemaster because you made a retcon earlier. Post 1 talks of a women in furs going arround the covenant. Post 4 talks about faeries that move arround the aegis, but not inside the covenant. Did you retcon the description in post #1, or are those two separate issues, and we do have an intruder inside the aegis on top of faerie neighbors in our garden?

Those are two separate things. Faeries cannot enter the aegis, and there are no faeries living inside. Gretel went looking for faeries for some unexplained reason and found an incidental faerie.

Elia comes into the kitchen, whistling a tune, and addresses them both in Latin "Good morning ladies, how are you doing?"