Tristan

After our meeting with Samuel Stadard we headed back to the Dead Raven tavern. There was a bard playing outside this time, I tossed him a coin for his passing amusements. When we got inside we asked about Lady Tisar, whom nobody has seen since we last saw Hella. Moments later a message came for our traveling cleric. The message stated there was something waiting in her room. A few of us checked her room, but to no avail. Shortly after, we heard a couple thuds coming from my room. Upon entering the room, we noticed there was a lock on the footlocker and it's contents on top of it. After some effort, we were able to get it opened to find Hellah inside of it, bound and gagged. She said the last thing she remembered was following Lady Tisar, seeing her jump unnaturally high to the 2nd floor of Stadard's estate, then a fog crept in so she couldn't see anything, and then woke up here. I took Hella downstairs for some much needed food and ale.
 
We asked the bard outside if he had seen Lady Tisar, but no such luck. Malor continued his investigation, it's only a town of ~100-200 people, mostly locals and farmers. Predominately, Lady Tisar just comes and goes as she pleases. Per Baxter, Martha has yet to return from Deep Bank either. As the evening crept on, we decided to call it a night.
 
Dawn came with a light snow flurry. We ate breakfast, then headed to the temple of Shalya to check-in with Baxter. All except the Tiefling, he supposedly went to investigate further into Lady Tisar... Martha didn't arrive last night either. I tried to convince the others to assist Samuel in investigating Pearford, however the others were more inclined to investigate the whereabouts of Martha and this supposed goblin issue. Thus we headed West to Deep Bank. We arrived late without any particular issues along the road. We saw a shrine to Taal on the way in and a few concentrated lights towards the center of town, which we hoped would be the tavern at this hour.
 
As luck would have it, we found the tavern, The Broken Plough. Our cleric and Tycone headed to find Martha, the rest of us stayed at the tavern. The bartender was named William, or so this Half-Elf we just met said. I was unable to converse with the bartender as I didn't speak the local tongue up here, but this guy did. That's when I met Tristan. He was pretty easy on the eyes, but his finer clothes had seen much better days as worn as they were. Tristan wasted no time flirting with Hellah and I, and started us with a round of some sweet Elven red wine. Turns out he spoke a few Elven dialects. I was always partial to a silver tongued guy.
 
He'd been living here in Deep Bank for awhile doing some odd jobs around the town and was quite familiar with everyone. Said he hadn't heard about any goblins or anything missing from their grain stores. He asked William about it, and he said..."We saw some goblins just the other day sneaking around the barn, we made some noise and scared them off. Some stuff has been missing of late it must be them." It seemed a little odd at first so we asked him again about it and he repeated himself, word for word. When asking some of the others in the tavern like Devon, they said the same thing as if they were all under a spell, some enchantment of sorts. This went on for awhile and was quite frustrating. The night went on and Tristan was not wasting anymore time. I told him if he would find out more information about the goblins or any issue with the grain stores tomorrow, I'd let him buy my another drink, and another glass of sweet Elven red wine came my way.
 
Seeing where this was headed and Hellah being concerned for safety after being stuffed in a footlocker, she said she'd watch my back and follow me to Tristan's abode. Tristan tossed a few coin to William for the drinks and we headed out. Tristan lived towards the edge of town in vardo. Much to my surprise it was quite lovely on the inside and surprisingly well furnished with nice silk sheets and fur blankets. He said he'd been living out of the vardo for awhile (20 years or so), but wouldn't go into details upon how he acquired such lavish items. Long story short, I didn't catch much sleep, but come morning, I felt well rested and was not disappointed.
 
It was a crisp morning, however it was warm wrapped up in Tristan's fur blankets. We had breakfast back at the tavern. The rangers did a patrol around the town, but no new leads or information came by it. This went on and off throughout the day until we all decided to make the most of investigating the locals and the barns and then head back in the morning with Martha. Martha needed an extra day of rest after being up all night assisting with the delivery of a newborn. At least I made good use of my time...
 
The next day came and Tristan decided he would head back with us to Pine Grove. The rest of the group was a little hesitant at first, but I didn't see anything wrong with someone sharing the road, safety in numbers and not many people are traveling right now. That and I also wanted to travel on the vardo with the warm fur blankets. Outside of some small talk the journey was pretty uneventful. Upon reaching Pine Grove though, Reece, the captain of the guard, noticed and warned Tristan not to get into any trouble. I waited outside the back of the tavern with Hella as Tristan went to stable his horse. A few minutes later and we heard a loud thud. Hella ran over first sneaking into the stable and then yelled at me to come over. There was Tristan laying on the ground unconscious, while a Skaven stood above him...