An Evening at the Groomsman’s Rest
The fifth of High Sun, 1493
After a baking hot day, it has been a predictably busy evening at the Groomsman’s Rest. The local farmhands have spent the day sheltering in the shade and have cultivated a thirst for cold pints of Inchling Cider.
Burley is helping behind the bar because Den is still in trouble with his sister Evelyn for returning without news of their father Gander.
Featherfew reflects on the conversation the party had with Caris Flyte after returning from Wicklow Mill. She thanked the friends, and rewarded them with 30 gold pieces. Enid elected not to show her the forged letter of commendation. They also spoke about the captured bandit, Gedrick: Caris revealed that he was a member of a gang called the Poor Sons. These highwaymen haunt the Dusk Road, robbing farmers and merchant caravans alike, and they are unafraid to shed blood in pursuit of booty. Caris was already aware of their leader, John Shade, a mysterious masked man, but the interrogation revealed the existence of a lieutenant, Roos, a fearsome Dragonborn knight. The bailiff told the party that she was keen to uncover the gang’s hideout and apprehend their leaders.
Caris doesn’t frequent the Groomsman’s Rest. Her stern presence has a way of dampening the festivities; besides, she has made it clear enough to Gander down the years that she prefers a Berdusk Zinfandel and a quiet evening listening to bottled recordings from the Elturel Opera House.
In order to keep the peace, she sends her deputy, Eldo Temple, a young Goliath with a shock of red hair, who is able to nurse a pint of cider and keep a watchful eye on the proceedings.
While tending bar, Burley served Harley Buck, the miller who had been accused of selling tainted flour. The poor halfling was already six pints deep and seemed no happier for being exonerated by the party. He complained to Burley that the Hollow Brook’s falling water level meant that he still could not grind flour, and he was at risk of defaulting on his loan to Axel Moorcraft. He confessed that he owed Moorcraft 65 gold pieces for this quarter, but only had 6 gold to his name. If he can’t pay his debt, Moorcraft will claim ownership of Buck’s Mill.
Axel Moorcraft is in the Groomsman’s Rest tonight. He is sipping a small order of port, drinking from a crystal goblet that he bought with him, and with each sip, he makes a face of fresh displeasure, as though the Groomsman’s Port has found a new way of disappointing him each time. He is squinting around the bar, while making notes in a small book. Pebbles approached him, somewhat worse for drink, and offered two gold pieces toward Harley’s debt, which Moorcraft accepted with a smirk. Enid accused the moneylender of poor taste in lurking in the tavern, reminding the revellers of their debts; Moorcraft scolded Enid, railing against those who borrow money and drink away their incomes and claim to be unable to settle their accounts. The banker was grim, censorious, and entirely at ease with extracting wealth from those who struggled to pay.
After, Enid thought back to the party’s meeting with Ma Marigold. Ma reassured the friends that they had done the right thing in Wicklow Mill, sternly denouncing the Miller’s wife as a fool for trifling with a creature of great power; these entities, she says, are to be respected and appeased, and their curses must be ended swiftly and without compromise. Her satisfaction with the party’s work is quickly ended when Enid shows her the magical poppet that the friends found at the bottom of the well. Ma snatched it from Enid and hurled it into the stove, uttering a spell as she did so. She reprimanded Enid, saying that she had been told not to accept anything while on the road and that she should know better than to bring a cursed object into the home. As the party left, Ma pulled Enid aside and told her that she had given her room to a young foundling that she had taken in. The poor girl claimed to have no recollection of her home or family, and Ma had decided to care for her until her family could be located.
Burley sees his mentor, Menny Reedfellow, and his father, enjoying a drink together, but he can tell his father is not entirely at ease, possibly because his boss, Elma Welgemoed is in the tavern, drinking alone. Elma is the proprietor of the Welgemoed tannery, and the mother of the friends’ childhood bully, Bruno Welgemoed.
Meanwhile, Pebbles is with his mentor, Burt Wilton, the mudlark, Gurgis Smolk, and two new acquaintances, Carp Barlow and Linny Stringwinder. Carp is an odd looking character, squat and built like a beer keg, his pallid white skin has a shimmering golden sheen to it, a bit like a goldfish; his wide mouth seems to stretch from one side of his head to the other. Linny is a dusky coloured gnome, whose restless hands click and fidget with a variety of small knickknacks; Pebble’s eye is caught by an ancient looking coin, copper coloured by almost entirely covered with a black patina, which she sets spinning on the tabletop. The groups discuss matters of questionable legality in the Traveller’s Tongue.
Carp offers Pebbles some work, suggesting that a boy without fear would be perfect for what he has planned. Any future ventures have to wait however, until he has offloaded his precious cargo; he claims to have recently acquired a ‘big haul’ that he thinks he will be able to sell in the Dower.
On the other side of the bar, Ilyad has spotted Carp, and has recognised him as a petty thief and grave robber that she met in the Triel penitentiary. Wanting to avoid an awkward reunion, Ilyad slips away from her mentor, Robbie Pallabar, and uses her natural traits as a Changeling to shift her appearance. Her disguise works perfectly: Carp does not recognise her as he tails Gurgis Smolk out of the bar.
The evening takes a dramatic turn as the Groomsman’s patrons hear a cry of ‘stop, thief’ from outside, followed by a long, gurgling scream of pure terror.
Racing out to the stables, the party come across a horrifying scene: the stables are overrun by undead hobgoblin warriors. Skeletons in dusty copper armour clamber over a cart loaded with crates and shovels, retrieving ancient-looking notched swords and other relics from amidst the cargo, while zombies, grave-dirt still clinging to the papery skin, lurch menacingly toward Carp and Gurgis. The two rouges have both armed themselves with shields and weapons, presumably from the same haul of misbegotten grave goods. The party hurl themselves into combat: Featherfew utters a spell, illuminating the dead in a purple glow, while Burly runs toward the stabled horses, clotheslining a zombie on the way. Pebbles conjures a pool of slippery grease on the stable floor, sending the dead clattering, while Enid cuts them down, her sword sheathed in an incandescent white sparks. Featherfew’s new familiar, Mrs Bunch, an owl, enters the fray, distracting the ravening creatures. Gurgis managed to extricate himself from the grasp of his assailants and fled out of the stables’ northern doors clutching a copper shield.
Although the tide of the contest turned in favour of the friends, they were unable to prevent Carp Barlow being cut down. The tiefling fell to the swords of the hobgoblin skeletons. Moments later, they also witnessed a pale rider on a skeletal horse canter past the northern stable doors. To his cracked, thin lips, he held a copper whistle, the piercing shrillness of which seemed to draw the undead out of the stables, away from combat and toward some other malign purpose. Unnoticed by most, a tall figure lurked at the southern door, watching all that unfolded.
Enid mounted one of the tethered carthorses, successfully calming the frightened animal. Pursuing the fleeing undead, the rest of the party emerged from the stables to the north to see that Gurgis Smolk had sought shelter in the holy grounds of the Rose Garden, the high harvest hall of Chauntea. The undead flailed at him helplessly, warded off by the sanctified aura of the church. He raised his stolen shield fearfully, attempting to protect himself from his pursuers’ clawing hands. The pale rider wheeled his mount around and draw a sinister bow from his saddle. The party could now clearly see that this figure was a hobgoblin warrior, the once tawny skin of his face now pallid and stretched tight over his skull. Clad in more refined armour, this figure was surely the commander of these undead forces, and his actions betrayed a cunning intellect, undiminished by death and decay. Tethering a thin cord to a notched arrow, he fired the bolt at Gurgis, spearing him through the chest before dragging him bodily out of the church grounds. The undead fell upon the mudlark, quickly snuffing out his life, before reclaiming his ill-gotten shield.
As the rider raced away to the north, around the churchyard, the party surveyed the scene. The undead had, it seemed, invaded Devlin’s Dower intent on reclaiming their grave goods that had been recently looted by Carp Barlow and Linny Stringwinder; slaughter was not their primary goal, but they would cut down any who got in their way. As Illyad mused on her vision, Burley heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the west.