View source for While The Cat's Away...

>---< High Reaches Weyr >----------------------------------------------------<
  Message: 5/9                    Posted        Author
  While the cat's away...         Sun May 31    N'thei
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  With the collective attention of the Weyr turned toward their Sands, the  
  "new friends" they've made recently have reared their heads again. On the 
  night of the Hatching, taking time to work its way out to the Weyr now    
  that the roads are muddy messes, a waystation near Nabol was sacked by    
  people who, it was eventually determined, must be related to those that   
  have been raiding the Reaches' tithes the past weeks. Late in the night,  
  all clad in black, they looted the stores, loading it into one of the     
  waystation's own wagons for transport. The following morning, the Nabolese
  realized that one of their sons had been taken in the raid, a boy in his  
  late teens, quite the promising lad. All hopes are that he's being held   
  for ransom and not just in a ditch somewhere. The following day, a string 
  of similar raids happened at smaller farmholds off the main road; by all  
  indications, the culprits were headed back toward the Reaches itself,     
  though they seem to have disappeared off the map, with no sign of them by 
  sweeps riders in the area.                                                
                                                                            
  All hopes that the botched raid, the one that arrived in tact with Reaches
  riders escorting it, had put an end to the thefts are now officially      
  dashed. The glass-half-full people keep remarking that, with winter       
  closing in, a respite must be coming. The glass-half-empty people just    
  point out that it'll be that much more miserable to catch a thief in a    
  snowstorm.                                                                
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