Faith
(cpm4001)
The scouts ran from their attackers.
They had gone to Florence, and then planned to set South, along the shore of the Magna Lacus - the Great Lake - into the unknown lands. The terrain was fairly inhospitable south of Florence, but they didn't fear that; they were the Scultators, the finest explorers of the city.
What they did fear were the hostile tribes, clad in furs and carrying crude clubs, who had accosted them. Of course they had tried to be friendly when they saw the smoke from one of their campfires on the horizon - perhaps they were another group of Florentines, or even those who called themselves Bogotans the inept warriors had somehow staggered upon. But another friendly group discovered would be another accolade, and so another great victory over the warriors.
But these people had attacked, felling several of the scouts. The rest ran, leaving some of their supplies behind. The hostiles - Barbarae, some of the scouts had decided to term them - evidently found food and the hand-crafted clubs of stout wood of the scouts more interesting than simply killing, and so the escape was made good.
But the scouts would be the last people ever to say that their retreat was inglorious. For as they ran they found a place that must have been holy, for it was there that water came, not from the sky, but from the earth. It was hot, yes, painfully so, but that was surely another sign that it was blessed.
Later, when the scouts returned to Esteran, their report of this deed earned them much prestige and heaps of argentum, which had now become a sort of status symbol and a valued trade good. To further their interests, they would commission the construction of a shrine to the spirits of the water-sprayer.
For now, though, they needed to decide what to do with the Barbarae defiling the sacred place with the presence.