At Tevis' offer of help, Hanna nods her head and shrugs the load of logs off her back and onto the ground.
"Oh sure, you look like a strong young man, can you just put those inside on the woodpile next to the fireplace?"
(OOC: Tevis, DC 10 Athletics Check to carry this heavy bundle of logs)
She straightens, and her back pops and cracks when she puts her hands on her hips and stretches out. Old, but still strong.
"Oh sure, wolves and bears were always a problem. The first year we had a bear kick the door open in my house just to get at the honey we had saved up above the cook fire. But it wasn't bears that did that to my friends."
She peers at you all, trying to judger your character, and then reluctantly continues.
"I still don't like to talk about it. It's an unnatural thing, what happened there those years ago. I had been back to the Keri's Crossing, trading some elk hides, and I got caught up in the rain, even heavier than what we got yesterday. Delayed me getting back to Mosswood by a day, and I think that day saved my life. We had taken in a wanderer who had come out of the woods. He seemed harmless, just keep muttering on and on about how he had to 'kill the being' for someone and how he was trying to get out of some deal. Said he wanted back to his family. Anyways, he was staying in one of the houses near mine when I left town to go trade. But the night I came back into town, it was too quiet. Usually someone would be playing the fiddle, or chopping wood, or anything. But it was dead quiet. Made me suspicious, and I didn't yell out, I just tried to sneak up to my house and see what was going on."
There's a pause, as she gathers herself. Her eyes look off into the distance, seeing something that happened years ago.
"They were all standing around him. No light left in their eyes, just standing around that bloody stranger, in a circle, stock still. And as I watched, they just seemed to dissolve into some kind of black mist. Every one of them, even the children. And then when that strange man was the only one left standing there, he turned and looked right at me, seemed to know I'd been hiding and watching the whole time. His eyes were like portals into hell, they were. And then he just walked off into the forest."
She wipes her nose on the edge of a tattered sleeve and looks defiantly at you all.
"Well, believe it or don't, but that's what happened. Your friends there thought I was a crazy person, muttered about me having mush for brains all these years later. See what good it did them!"
DC 14 Arcana Check - Clues
People disappearing into smoke... that's some advanced magic. Almost sounds like a demonic curse gone wrong if you had to take a guess. Not something that any random person walking into the town could do. But at the same time, it might just be possible.
DC 14 Insight Check - Read Hanna
She seems like she's being honest. At least in her mind, this is exactly what happened. And looking at the way she carries herself and lives on her own, it seems like she's pretty aware of what's going on around her. She doesn't seem like the kind that would go around telling tall tales for no reason.
Hanna makes a judge of character