I quickly released the bow string

>Adler: No-NO! It's happening again! It's your hair cult all over again. Only now you'll have the blood of an innocent woman and two teenagers on your hands! Wait- Stop panicking, you dolt! This is different, you're here this time. You can turn this around and save everyone. Just get your thoughts together. Auggh! How is it that everything can spiral out of control this quickly?? No, you need to focus! Imagine if Vernier were here. Wait, Rebecca spent weeks living with Vernier. If you don't get this under control soon, she could be implicated. >Serious Adler: Something clicks in your mind and the fog of panic leaves you. Your brain becomes a finely tuned problem solving machine on par with the great Ireaneus himself. >Super Serious Adler: You call your ixies and instruct them to go and rescue Gretchen and Petunia. Only a few ixies left to fetch Oak, so you should have many still around. Tell your ixies to hit the rabbits chasing the girls hard enough that they won't remember what happened. To be on the safe side, so they won't just blame their failure on witchcraft, soak the unconscious rabbits with booze to make it look like they were out drinking instead of hunting witches. Lives are at stake, move it! >Burnside: What does he want you to do? >Man-with-the-plan Adler: You need her close by in the off chance someone is bold enough to go into the woods. Tell her to be ready for a fight. You also might need her to go on a mission, once you have a plan put together. >Rebecca: What about Oonagh? >Steel Nerves Adler: She's already been arrested. If you break her out of jail, that will just prove she's guilty in the minds of her accusers. You WILL find a way to set this right, but you need to make sure everyone is safe first. Speaking of which, you command several more ixies to warn and guard Vernier, she might be guilty by association. At the first sign of trouble, she is to be brought here. You take a deep breath, now that the immediate action is underway, if you are going to solve this you need more information. >Detective Adler: You ask Chloe why in Fuma's name was the testimony of a single irritating and unlikable child enough to persecute a harmless old lady that was well loved by the community and three minors only guilty of bad taste in fashion? >Chloe: Most people didn't believe her, or even care for that matter. She just wouldn't shut up. She would stop random strangers in the street and screech her entire story at them. She would open windows and screech her stories outside. It was a two day long tantrum where she just constantly screeched her twisted, false story to the world at large. >Sharp as a razor Adler: Didn't Oonagh have anything to say about this terrible behavior? >Chloe: Oonagh said Didelphis was just being "rambunctious" and it was normal for children at that age. Oonagh spent most of the last two days trying to spoil Didelphis. Anyway, word eventually reached the Rabbits and once they heard about "the white elf" they went berserk. They started smashing windows and attacking people. The magistrate ordered your arrests to appease them. >He has a point Adler: Why are the Rabbits allowed to harass people outside of their trashy little town? Why do people put up with them? >Chloe: After the Rabbits beat back the Shoe Cult and all the mercenaries defending them so handily, they frightened all the surrounding communities to the point they are pretty much given whatever they want. They keep growing bolder with their actions, and if they get away with this, it will only get worse. >Adler: You angrily face palm. That damn shoe cult. Why is it that the source of all your problems in the lowfolk world keeps going back to Jerry?

Au contraire. Witchcraft continued being a crime in some countries well into the twentieth century. The famous Salem witch panic happened in the 1690s. The last witchcraft trial in the United States was also in Massachusetts in 1878, (or depending on how you define "witchcraft," in Virginia in 1706.) The Scottish Witchcraft Act was passed in 1735, and the last person to be prosecuted under that act was in 1944 (she was convicted too!) The act was repealed in 1951. Anyway the current time period in the Ballad feels like mid 1700s to me. Also keep in mind that the rabbits of Bunkirk are fundamentalist religious zealots.

What year is this time period? Witchcraft stopped being a crime in the mid-to-late 1500's and flintlocks were invented in the 1600's.