(3rd Person POV)
Arthur and the troupe traveled outside Eisen City to a rural village — their first filming location, the place that would stand in for Dorothy's Farm.
An hour later, they arrived. It looked exactly as it had in Leonard's photographs.
"Hmm? Didn't expect to see merchants again."
"Didn't we just sell our goods a while ago?"
"I don't recognize that carriage... is it a new merchant?"
The villagers had already spotted the carriages, and naturally, they saw the certified emblem of the Merchant Guild mounted on the side. Next to it was the emblem of Hellfire Company — which meant nothing to them yet.
Leonard hopped out and began explaining to the gathering crowd that they weren't here to buy anything, that they had no goods to trade, and that people should go about their day.
The mood soured quickly once that sank in. The crowd dispersed in ones and twos, some of them visibly annoyed. They'd gotten their hopes up — two large wagons arriving together had the look of serious business, the kind that put coin in a village's hands.
Arthur stepped down from his carriage and surveyed the village through the open gate. He walked over to Leonard and gave the surroundings a slow, appraising look. "Not bad. This location is exactly what I had in mind. It actually looks even better than the pictures."
Leonard smiled, a little sheepish. "He-he, truth be told, it wasn't hard to find. Villages like this one — no magic users among them — they're known as Magic-less Villages. Lowly places, in the eyes of most commoners and nobles alike." His tone dipped. "They depend heavily on merchants passing through to buy their goods. So when we told them we weren't here to purchase anything... well. You saw their faces."
Arthur nodded slowly.
'This world has problems.'
'Discriminating against their own people simply because they were born without magic. No wonder the Origin stays indifferent to the war between humans and demons. Or maybe the Origin arranged it this way on purpose — building a world where equality isn't even something people think to want. A world divided by magic, by blood, by things no one chose.'
He let the thought settle, then filed it away.
"We're not here for nothing," he said to Leonard. "Go talk to the farmers around here. See if anyone's willing to rent out their land for the filming."
"Understood." Leonard nodded and set off. The man had a gift for it — something easy and disarming in the way he carried himself that made people reluctant to stay angry at him for long.
It didn't take much time. Several farmers stepped forward and offered to show Arthur their land. He walked each one, measuring it against the image he had in his head — Dorothy's Farm, exactly as he'd envisioned it. In the end, the choice was straightforward.
"I'll take this one." Arthur produced a small handful of silver coins and held them out to the farmer. "That's your down payment. The rest comes later, depending on how long we use the property."
The farmer's face split wide open. "Thank you, kind lord! Thank you!"
Around them, the other farmers who hadn't been chosen stood watching with the tight, restless look of men doing arithmetic in their heads.
"Why did the merchant pick his farm?"
"No idea."
"Shh — keep it down. You'll upset him."
Arthur paid them no mind. He turned to Leonard. "Go get the troupe from the first wagon and the crew from the second. We're starting soon."
"Aye." Leonard moved at once.
The two wagons rolled in through the village gate, and people began spilling out — more of them than the villagers had expected, far more than made sense for a merchant visit.
"What in the world..." An old man squinted from the roadside. "Why are there so many of them?"
"I don't know," his neighbor muttered. "But they all seem to be heading toward Old Ward's farm."
---
Old Ward stood at the edge of his property, watching the strangers haul bulky equipment across his land and plant long sticks into the ground that he couldn't begin to name. He murmured to himself, trying to make sense of it.
A small cluster of villagers had drifted over to stand beside him.
"Old Ward, what are they doing to your place?"
He shook his head. "No idea. But whatever it is, as long as they keep their hands off the farm itself — the cows, the chickens, the eggs — I don't much care. They paid me silver coins for it."
"Silver coins? Just to use your land?"
"That merchant doesn't want to trade?"
"Apparently not." Old Ward straightened a little, enjoying himself. "Just wants to use the place for something. Renting it. I don't know what for, but he promised there's more pay coming once they're done."
While they talked, Arthur glanced over and made a gesture in their direction. Old Ward and the others instinctively braced — assuming they were about to be waved off the property.
Instead, Arthur called them closer.
"Any of you interested in earning some coin?" he asked.
They exchanged looks, then nodded in near-unison, any confusion instantly outweighed by the prospect of payment. "We're interested! What do you need from us, my lord?"
Arthur smiled. 'Perfect, actually.' He was short on extras, and who better to play villagers in a village scene than the people who actually lived there.
He laid out the general idea, but the blank stares told him most of it wasn't landing. He handed it off to Leonard, who broke it down in plain terms — that this group was something like a travelling theatre company, that the villagers would be doing something similar to a stage performance, and that they'd be paid for their time.
That landed much better. The idea of a theatre performance — something that meant spectacle, and novelty, and a story — lit up their faces.
They hadn't expected the merchant to be running a troupe.
It didn't take long to get everyone sorted. Arthur moved through the setup with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd done this before, arranging the cast and positioning the extras while the crew finished their work. When everything was finally in order, he stepped back and looked over the scene.
This was the beginning of something.
The story of Dorothy — a girl from a magic-less village, magic-less herself, who stumbles into the raw essence of magic when she's swept into another world entirely: Oz. A realm overflowing with magic and wonder, fantastical even by the standards of a world where magic already existed. Her journey through it would be the heart of the whole production.
The first takes were rough. The cast fumbled their positioning; the extras drifted, hesitated, looked at the wrong things. Mistakes came in clusters.
Hazel and the troupe found their footing faster — they had theatre experience to fall back on, and it showed. The villagers took longer, made more errors, needed more patience. Arthur didn't push them. They weren't actors. He hadn't expected them to be.
Between takes, he brought Hazel and the troupe inside Old Ward's house to review their performances on the television. The first time they saw it, the room went quiet. Even Leonard stood there staring at it, clearly fighting the urge to start pulling it apart to see how it worked.
The extras weren't brought in for the reviews. The television was being kept from them for now.
But for Hazel and the others, watching themselves on screen turned out to be exactly the right tool. They could see their own mistakes — a misplaced step, a look held half a beat too long — and they corrected them with each new take. Their performances climbed steadily as the days went on.
They filmed at the village for just over two days before wrapping the location. But there was no real stopping point yet. The next filming location was already waiting, and they moved on.