March in Marchenghast

March at last! Our February turned out to be much less brutal weather-wise than our January, though, so for once I was in no particular hurry for it to go. Thanks to having Marchenghast to explore, the Milan-Cortina Olympics to watch, and some engrossing books lined up to read, it did not drag on the way most Februarys do. Also, the family calendar pic was especially cute:

March's pic is cute too, but not much can compete with a baby panda.

One blight on our February: back on the 19th, while Mom was getting ready for work in her bedroom, a mouse ran by her and under the bed! It was quite remarkable how quickly she (Mom, not the mouse) launched herself onto her bed.  Then later the same morning, when our grandma was bagging up the trash in the kitchen, a mouse jumped out! Talk about a traumatic morning!

This sucks, because while we we've long had mice issues in the partially-unfinished basement (it's part of the reason why my sisters and I were moved upstairs), we thought the upper levels were "safe." Mousetraps are set up in Mom's room and in the trash cupboard now. We've been living in dread of hearing snaps in the night, but in the 2+ weeks since, nothing has been caught in Mom's room, and just one mouse was caught by the trash. Mom currently spends as little time in her room as possible and is very jumpy when she is, which is sad for us and the stuffed animals. 

Poor Marchenghast has much more serious blight problems than a few mice. For the first time ever, we moved our home stable from Moorland, making Marchenghast our home base. Marchenghast has kept us so busy that we've hardly left. 

We've made many a trek from the castle through the blighted forest to the witches' hamlet.

So far, despite their off-putting appearances, I prefer the witches to most of the castle folk. Though they are barely hanging on themselves, the witches are still are trying their best to help the forest creatures affected by the Blight.

In addition to helping the cute winged Mahr, they help reptilian wolf-like creatures called Nicchus, which the castle folk are deathly afraid of.

These guys are rather fearsome-looking, but they actually minded their own business in the swamp before the Blight.

One noteworthy daily task Clara can now help with: riding out to Nicchus suffering from the blight and allow them to chase her back to Mercy in the witches' hamlet. (In their blighted state, they give chase because they want to destroy her lantern.)

Mercy then gives them a potion to temporarily counter the Blight's effects.

The third forest beast still hanging on: the massive Waldfenggen.

Aww! A+ from us on these Marchenghast creatures, Star Stable.

Unfortunately, they sometimes get lost from their homes, lose the light in their shells, and can't find the strength to go on. At other times, petrified blight blocks their homes. Clara sometimes gets called to help out in both situations.

Another interesting daily task: a race through the forest to bring shadow witches to the lantern tree, where the (regular) witches perform the Ritual of Shadows to temporarily appease them. These shadow witches are certain members of the witches' coven who, upon dying untimely deaths during centuries of witch hunts, did not cross over into the afterlife. They remain trapped between the realms and are so angry and full of grief that they'll attack whoever they come across.

The daily race is a bit of a sensory overload, but fortunately the shadow witches do not actually touch Clara or her horse. Clara and horse (Opal in this case) just have to avoid the noxious potions that the shadow witches hurl down from the sky.

At the end, we always get a clip with dramatic music showing the shadow witches kind of poofing away in flashes of light by the tree. Quite satisfying.

While we enjoy the forest tasks, it is less stressful within the walls of Marchenghast, where we don't have to constantly be monitoring our lantern and making sure it doesn't run out of light to protect us.

In the storyline, the Duke's daughter Lady Margarete, who seems to be much more reasonable and open to change than her father, has permitted some of the ailing beasts to take refuge in Marchenghast.

My favorite daily task is finding 3 scared, hiding Mahr and leading them back to the kindly Hans. It's similar to the "find the baby dragons" daily that we used to be able to do in the medieval area, but it isn't quite as hard to find them, and they're so much cuter when you do.

Some other fun daily activities include:

riding a showjumping course, in which one of the jumps has lances for poles

and leading two recovering Nicchus on an exercise run around Marchenghast, while also destroying some petrified Blight with the lance while we're at it

While the witches and the castle folk are each making separate efforts to fight the Blight, Ilwedrisch the Mahr wisely indicated that it will take both working together to stand any chance of surviving as it continues to gain strength. He advised Clara come clean to both Margarete and Abigail that she's helping both sides, and fortunately neither banished her when she did. In fact, both were desperate enough to agree to a peaceful meeting in the forest. 

It did not go well, and it would seem there are some skeletons in the closet that the Duke is keeping from Margarete... We'll see what happens with time.

Thanks to all the Marchenghast activities, Cherrypeak sped through her experience levels, reaching level 15 after an exercise run with the Nicchus.

We'd have been quite happy to continue cycling through our other horses for a few more weeks, but this past Wednesday, yet another bazaar set up shop in Moorland, finally prompting us to leave Marchenghast for a while this weekend.

Since the other chunk of big news this Wednesday was that the Finnhorse, Fjord, and Icelandic have now been retrofitted (AKA they can now wear all the new tack, hooray!), we expected the bazaar to feature all 3 of them. We did get the Finnhorse:

But no Fjord or Icelandic on sale, oddly. Instead, we get the Friesian:

and the new dragon horses. Here they are in their non-dragon forms:

We are in the minority in that we prefer the original dragon horses to these new ones, but we do. So, we were not especially tempted by them, even though their fire-breathing animation is impressive.

The Friesians are much more tempting! While we've long admired them, we passed them over the first time they went on sale back in Dec, hoping for a bazaar reappearance at an even lower price. We technically got our wish, as they are slightly more on sale this time: 620 star coins (35% off) vs. 669 (30% off) last time. Lily is encouraging us to keep waiting until they make a third bazaar appearance, especially since so many of our horses haven't even gotten a chance to see Marchenghast yet, but the rest of us really want to jump on this second chance... 

At least we have it narrowed down to one of two Freisians when we do decided to purchase one, whether it be now or later. As good-looking as the Friesian Sporthorses and two non-black variations of the Friesian are, we have our hearts set on a black one. He or she will either be the more brown-toned black on the left with the tiny star or the blue-black on the right. We're torn because we prefer the darker eyes of the one on the left but the blue-black color of the one on the right. 

We'll let you know next time what happens!