With Spring, renewal.

[Cinnabar]

Across the land, Spring is making its mark in forests and hedgerows, and reflected in the efforts of Myrken Wood's citizenry. It has been a long, hard winter, bitter months that have claimed more lives than anyone would wish; and yet the sun climbs higher in the sky with each passing day, bringing a growing warmth and with it, perhaps even a cautious optimism.

Following the defeat of the ghoul Teron Ashfiend efforts are made to assess the full extent of the creature's reign of terror; a gathering together of the names of those slain by the Fiend's unholy blade and cruel magics, numbering certainly in the hundreds. Over time, the names come in - soldiers and citizens, farmers and townsfolk, there are few in Myrken Wood who have not lost someone they know to the Scourge of Myrken. The site of a fire-gutted house on Bridge Street whose occupants were butchered by the ghoul is cleared, the ground planted as a garden of remembrance for the dead; for now, the dark stone that will bear their names stands blank until a full tally is made, silent and solemn amid the fresh-turned earth.

Farmsteads refurbished after years of abandonment and neglect have found tenants; those holdings struck by the depredations of the Ashfiend pass into the hands of the survivors; the others who have been blessed enough to escape the ravages that the region can inflict on the unlucky make thanks to the One God. Throughout all of these scattered settlements, however, hands are turned to plough and hoe, and fields turn from winter-packed dirt to neatly-furrowed fields, sown with the seeds which will - hopefully - provide for Myrken Wood's needs come harvest-time.

In the meadows north of town the men of the New Myrken Army drill and train in the spring sunshine, marching in formation with pike and axe, while bowmen hone their skills at the archery butts nearby. Recruitment continues for both infantry and cavalry, with posters around town calling on the citizenry to enlist in the defense of Myrken Wood.

In Myrkentown itself, work on the reconstruction of the Meetinghouse continues apace; the Market Square is filled with the sound of hammers and saws, the ringing of chisels as stone is fashioned into masonry, the creak of winches as that masonry is hauled into place, and throughout it all the voices of the workers as they toil painstakingly towards the restoration of a building left too long as rubble.

As it has done so many times after disasters and calamities in recent years, Myrken rebuilds.