[sblock=OOG]Looks like there's no objection to Pendrake's offer to escort Gillin home, unless everyone's busy with Canada Day/4th July weekend and so on....[/sblock]"So you're all just getting to know each other! Well, that's grand. Maybe there's a new band of adventurers born tonight that they'll be singing songs about years from now. Course, maybe they won't be. You never really know, do you?" Gillin says.
With a slow shuffling walk, he heads from Red Dragon Square along one of the east-west streets that leads to Merchant Avenue. The market stalls to the south have already been packed away, leaving the broad street deserted but for street sweepers. Gillin turns north.
"Oh, it's a fine life for a young fella, adventuring is," he goes on. "Wandering the wilds, sleeping in the fresh air every night - for a couple of hours at a stretch, until it's your turn to take watch. All sorts of things trying to kill you, and you trying to kill them. Wondering whether following the next old map will make your fortune, or be the end of you. Course, there's downsides too. There's not too many women'll take up with someone who might be dead next week, unless she's an adventuring kind too. And you make a pile of gold, and you wonder if you should set yourself up for life with it, but then you spend it all on magic gear, and then lose it somehow, and you're back where you started, or worse."
"You could get to a little sandy beach down that way, if you wanted to get your feet wet," he says, pointing down Allimon Street towards the High District. "But you can see the sea just as well from the docks. There's some good – well, cheap - taverns along the dockside." He licks his lips in an anticipatory kind of way.
"Works out all right for some, though, doesn't it? Young Joe did nicely for himself, and Rilithorne, and Volidar, and – well, not so much that one, now that I think of it. 'Course I was near retired when Joe and the others started out. I'd like to think it was some of my tales that gave Joe the idea to take up the life. It must be nigh on sixty years since Mildred smacked her first goblin in the head, thirty since I got too old, and a quarter-century since I admitted it."
"Now my old pals are all dead, or lost interest in old Gillan. That's the trouble with elves, isn't it? No offence, Master Nightingale. Still young, when you're already on speaking terms with Zephos himself. They'll come by to say hello when they next think of it and be surprised you've passed on. No, it's just me and Mildred now."
