The first stop on the party’s journey to [[Outpost B]] in [[Ilnam]] to meet up with [[Old Man]], carrying his huge stash of [[mushroom]] they aren’t sure they should eat yet, was in the village of [[Sherman]]. They stopped by the open-air market for some clothes they could use to blend in in case the [[Empire]] realized their role in the train massacre and pursued them. Unfortunately they could not complete their errands because [[Bemo]] attacked a twelve-year-old girl to steal garments from her vending booth, which he alleged was overpriced. While [[Eithan]] and [[Yuzu]] attempted to settle the commotion Bemo created in the market, Bemo wandered out and set fire to the fence surrounding the village’s mysterious obelisk, then while invisible whispered into the ears of a teenage boy with schizoaffective disorder. The boy began to shout, vaguely, that “They” were coming, which the village understood to mean to the four-legged spider-human centaur-like creatures they called [[sirens]], which came in both fast-dumb and smart-slow varieties, who sometimes came to the village in a herd to feed on human flesh. In hopes of better understanding the situation, Eithan tried to trigger the childhood trauma of an old village man with [[talking no jutsu]]. This had the expected effect of working the man up and did not clarify anything, but the old villager’s moaning in flashback fear did inspire the village’s leader [[Earn]] to gather the whole town into the shelter cave where they always hid from the sirens until the [[Imperial Troopers]] summoned by the [[obelisk]]—the obelisk functioned both as an attraction beam for the sirens and as a one-way portal for imperial troopers to visit Sherman—to exterminate all the sirens and re-establish safety. While inside the cave, Yuzu threw a pink pill into an assailing Siren’s mouth which gave it a visible, spider-like erection. Some sirens attempted to enter through the ventilation hole of the cave, which Yuzu plugged with an enlarged crossbow bolt. Combined with the fire the village adolescents were maintaining for warmth and entertainment, this airtight seal suffocated all the villagers by the time the imperial troopers arrived. To help the party escape before the troopers came into the cave, Eithan transformed a load-bearing tree into a plank, collapsing the ceiling, but also as a side effect transforming his left leg into a peg leg. Much of the overhead soil landed on and crushed a mother-daughter pair Bemo had dragged into the most exposed position to ensure their death. Together the party escaped into the forest west of Sherman, where the smarter sirens lived. Next: [[elder's path 6]]