Again, Marco flinches each time Vaunea speaks.
"Now! We'll leave now! W-whenever you want!"
With a frantic wave, he calls over the waitress and pays the check, all but hurling the money at the table. Almost tumping the table in his haste, he rushes outside and hails a hackney.
Marco seats himself as far away from Vaunea as possible and gives instructions to the driver.
---
After a lengthy ride, you arrive in an older district of the city. Not a poorer district, just older. The houses are middle class and have a lived-in, but well kept look. The style of architecture is about sixty or seventy years out of date.
The coach pulls up before a small ranch-style home with a well-kept lawn. A variety of windmills and colorful, cute statuary decorate it, as do bird-feeders and flower-beds. A group of elderly halflings sits on the porch in rocking chairs and bench swings. They drink beer from oversized steins and talk in a language that is probably common, but so heavily accented as to be nigh unintelligible.
Marco whispers, "Listen. I'm going to talk to my cousin. You wait in the carriage. If he's interested in speaking to you, I'll call you over. Whatever you do, do not exit the cab unless he wants to talk to you. He...he's a bit eccentric like that. If by eccentric you mean excessively territorial and disturbingly violent."
Marco approaches the porch, stopping at a safe distance until the older halflings call him over. He enters a heated conversation with a grizzled one-armed halfling. After several minutes of what appear to be pleading, begging, praying, and pointing at your party, Marco turns towards your group, wipes the sweat from his brow, smiles, and gives you the thumbs up.
He and the elderly halfling walk to the middle of the lawn. Marco waves for you to approach. "Cousin Eustace has agreed to talk to you!"
As you leave the carriage and draw closer, you get a better look at the one-armed halfling.
He is whipcord thin. His skin has the look of toughened leather, lined with wrinkles and veins. Despite the looseness of his flesh, you can see each muscle and bone in fine relief. The knuckles of his right hand look like walnuts, and there is a bit of dirt under his fingernails, a mark that he is one maintaining this lawn. His wispy hair is grey. His eyes are pale, pale blue, and have that faraway look of one who has survived a thousand bloody conflicts. Even at rest, his expression looks to be a snarl of disgust.
[sblock=In other words...]He's a one-armed halfling Clint Eastwood.[/sblock]
"Cousin Eustace, this is..." Marco begins, introducing each of you in turn. "Group, this is Cousin Eustace. He used to an adventurer, just like you."
Eustace sips from his mug.
"Sahyuirth'baigfkeersm'coozinsaizbaewaitanmeesward," says Eustace. His voice sounds like a wolf's growl after it gargled gravel and broken glass.
[/sblock]
Those are utterly intelligible. Except for some kind of red rain. I infer the halfling is boasting about the blood he used to draw?[/sblock]
