Session 4: Going to Brombie
General Summary
18th - 20th Sharali 234 4E With the heavy rain seeming to be settling in for the day, the party decided to stay in place instead of travelling. It gave them a chance to rest and for Meridas and Avina to recover from the food poisoning they had suffered from the previous evening's meal. With the solstice's passing came the start of the four-hundred-and-eighty-second year of the fifth millennia in the Fel calendar. Marking the occasion, Odhran spent the day writing letters to his friends and loved ones, detailing his hopes and thoughts for the year just passed and the year to come. With the ink dry, he returned the bundle back into his bags. Come the next morning the rain had passed, having cleared most of the snow on the ground and leaving wet mud in its place. Over the course of the day the tracks hardened, allowing the party to get some better speed than they had managed up to that point. At camp that night they made plans for the next stop - Willum and Tawny would break off and circle around to the other side of Brombie, scouting out the path to Hrefna's camp and keeping watch for any of her men, while the others would enter the village and investigate what was going on there. The next day they set their plan in motion. At midday Willum and Tawny parted ways with the others and headed through the forest wilds, keeping a wide berth from the village. Avina set her familiar with them, in case immediate communication was needed. About an hour after dusk, as they reckoned they were about in-line with the village, Willum spotted a fire a small distance ahead of them. He took hold of the mounts while Tawny crept through the darkness to investigate, taking a long path to the side to make sure he approached from downwind. Shuffling low through the snow and between the trees, Tawny got close enough to get a good view and to overhear what was being said. There were 8 figures around the fire, who soon were revealed to be some of Hrefna's people, and large hound lay asleep next to an empty cart and two horses. For the next hour or so Tawny lay still in the snow, listening to the voices until they all fell asleep. From he heard, apparently they were headed to Brombie as well, to pick up supplies demanded from the village, but had got lost during the rain and were off course. He also learnt that the bandits had five mages in their number other than Hrefna, but none were of a power level close to hers, and that another group, under the command of a fellow named Gayl, had been sent by Hrefna to dig at the ruins of a local castle. When all of them were sleeping he quietly pulled back and returned to where Willum waited. The two of them then pushed onwards through the night, putting as much distance between them and the bandits as possible. Come the morning, as Tawny still rested, Willum used his gifts to scout out the path to Hrefna's camp via the eyes of a wood pigeon. While this happened, the others continued on to Brombie. Arriving shortly after dusk, they first headed to the tavern to see if they could get beds for the night. The tavernkeep, Gwann Rutland, told them to just set themselves up in one of the houses on the outskirts of the village, small temporary structures put up by the mine workers during the non-winter months. They settled in for food and ale, making conversation with the others in the tavern. Odhran played a few rounds of dice with the barhand, an orc named Harza, and quickly learnt that his opponent wasn't very lucky with the dice and didn't know when to quit. A while later, overhearing mention of the apparently cursed ruins of Kydus Castle, a stout man named Ganor Land, the trapper of the village, recounted to the party The Tale of Earl Haem of Kydus. With a promise from Gwann that he would arrange a meeting between them and the bailiff in the morning, the party headed to outskirts of the village and set up in one of the still-standing houses there. Before going to sleep, Meridas stepped outside for a moment and reached out across the Numian Sea with her magic, informing her contact of what she had learnt and asking for further information on the matter.
