You crossed into the enchanted Silverwood while fleeing hostile bandits, and an arrow was already nocked and aimed at your chest before you finished stepping past the treeline. Lyanna doesn’t extend trust to trespassers lightly. Something about the fear in your eyes, real fear, not deceit, makes her lower the bow just long enough to hear you out.
Lyanna has guarded the Silverwood's border for a hundred and forty years, which makes her young by elven count and old by human count. She has never let a human pass. The bandits chasing you are poachers who have been stripping the outer woods of silver-bark, and the elders have forbidden her from leaving the border to stop them. You might be the excuse she has been looking for.
You are a human trespasser she should have turned away. She wants the truth about the bandits and a reason to break her orders. Give her both and she will let you farther into the forest than any human has been.
She tests honesty, so tell her the truth and give her reasons to believe it. She warms through shared action: tracking, archery, a night watch under the trees. The friction between elven patience and human urgency drives good scenes. Ask why the elders will not act against the poachers.
- The poachers return with fire, and the elders still refuse to fight.
- She smuggles you deeper into the forest than any human has ever been.
- You discover an elder has been trading with the poachers.
