Before the Rise of Tiamat

[gargoyleking]

"I'd take anything 'as doesn't 'arm me 'onor. Might even try my 'and at smithing if it comes doen to it. I've done a bit of mending 'ere an' there on th' road. Always someone with a fouled 'orseshoe or dented pot. But It's a waste o' me talents unless I'm makin' somethin' worthwhile.

 

[Envisioner]

OOC: Seems like a single day can't pass without one of my watched threads failing to notify me....

Lyle
Galena hesitates a moment, but her urge to be a good hostess does finally win out over her fixation on completing the caftan, and she sets her knitting aside, promising to produce the requested tea and snack. When she returns with these, she sits back down and sips her own cup once before speaking again, holding the warm cup in her (probably slightly-numbed from the needlework) hands. "Hm; can't think of anyone having mentioned you specifically. We have had several traders in recent weeks, and I did notice a few slightly questionable characters; I'm never sure what to make of the kind of folk who have business in Berdusk or Beregost or Baldur's Gate (strange how they all begin with -/-, hrm?) Let's see, I've forgotten most of those I saw going in and out of the hostel, but I can recollect three names, and a couple other faces that I never got a name for.

"There was a tallfolk named Imsa who was green from head to foot, she was pretty hard to avoid noticing; seemed nice enough as long as nobody asked her what the Asmodeus happened to her. Mentioned she was en route to Waterdeep, and probably hasn't finished a trip of such length by now. There was also a rather sinister-looking fellow who called himself Preznak; I never saw him go anywhere but up to his room and back out to the wagon, like he didn't find anything about the town worth his attention; I only heard his name because Imsa mentioned it while talking about his refusal to socialize. Thirdly there was a monk from Candlekeep who introduced himself as Leonard Never-Sin; bit pretentious, that nickname, but then he was some combination of human and elf, so that's pretty far from unusual, and aside from being full of himself he seemed friendly enough. Not the 'punching mountains in half' kind of monk, as far as I could tell, just a religious pilgrim with an armful of scrolls in his backpack. I also saw one of them "dragon-born" from out of the southeast, who never introduced himself in my presence, but was asking a lot of questions around town - some kind of antiquarian perhaps. And there was the tallest of tallfolk that I've ever seen, and the darkest-skinned to boot; scuttlebutt around his particular caravan was that he's called 'the pole", and that he's from some place to the far south where they have centaurs that are half-panther instead of half-horse. I think that's everybody that stood out in any kind of obvious way."

OOC: : The letter B in Thoross, the typical human and halfling alphabet of the Forgotten Realms, is fortunately possible for me to approximate in Unicode as -/-, although the central line ought to be unbroken, and the diagonal is a pen-stroke which should be wider at the top than the bottom. This is probably the only time I will bother to distinguish between Common written in Thoross and English written in Roman, since I happen to have the Sword Coast book out from the library, but very little of it seemed useful to me and I don't plan to keep it long.

 

[Envisioner]

Dwarves
While Grimnir and Mornok walk to the bar, the former at least notices the thick clouds starting to roll in from the west, born on a high wind far too violent to merit the typical term of "zephyr", the leading edge of which has already reached the town and is beginning to rattle the shutters, set the decorative elven chimes on several of the larger houses to jangling discordantly, and shake the trees hard enough to scatter early apples and acorns onto the ground a week sooner and a yard wider than they'd have ordinarily fallen. The cleric has strong reason to suspect his patroness might have sent this storm, though whether she had any reason for doing so is anyone's guess; in any event, his experience tells him that the brunt of the blow won't fall until close to midnight, even though the westerly gales have probably carried these clouds close to half of the distance from the sea already, crossing many a mile in perhaps as little as thirty minutes, before they started to pile up on the craggy peaks for which the Wood of Sharp Teeth is partially named. The terrain to the northwest and southwest of Greenest is probably already being soaked; how odd that Umberlee's servant seems to be in the one place least vulnerable to her wrath, assuming she is indeed wrathful this evening.

The seafaring dwarf was already planning his apotropaic ritual before he saw the evidence of his deity's presence; it seems even more prudent afterward. The inkeep glares a little at the sight of you pouring his ale onto his tables, but apparently decides to just dismiss this as typical dwarven weirdness and not comment upon it.

 

[gnarlygninja]

OOC: I assume none of these names mean anything to Lyle?

Lyle wondered for a moment if Galena forgot he had lived in Baldur's Gate for years or if she was gently reprimanding him but decided to ignore it. Food tended to distract him from most concerns.
"Thank you dear, I've often said no one can bake like you Goodburroughs. Mmm, is this apple? Wonderful." Lyle paused to let one of the dogs lick crumbs from his hand. "Sounds like the past few weeks have been eventful. Sadly I'm still settling back in and don't have much gossip to share, although I have noticed that new barber keeps strange hours. I haven't quite figured out where he goes so late at night. Are any of these strange people still in town or have they all passed on?"

 

[Envisioner]

OOC: Nope

The visitors all passed through at least a night or two ago. The green woman was closer to a week.

 

[gargoyleking]

Mornok looks up from his second tankard curiously. The wind was picking up outside and seemed rather frightful.

"Sounds like we got a howl comin'...

 

[Envisioner]

Greenest is a town small enough not to really need a City Watch, but also a town connected enough to the constant flow of traffic that it becomes status-conscious, and influenced by the trends of larger metropoli - one of which is the belief that a City Watch is an inherently prestigious institution, which no right-thinking settlement would be without. Thusly, Greenest has a City Watch of precisely five people, not counting the castellan who runs the city's central keep, although he also acts as an administrator for the Watch force while he's busy doing all of the other "nothing" he usually has to do, in his capacity as the fallback plan in case anything ever goes catastrophically wrong, which so far it never has. One of the five Watch officers is walking by the window as Mornok and Grimnir continue their conversation. He's carrying a bullseye lantern, but it isn't lit yet, since the sun has yet to actually set (although the clouds in the west have largely obscured this fact, so the exterior is pretty dim-looking by non-Dwarf standards).

 

[gnarlygninja]

Lyle finally noticed the wind picking up.
"Well Gal, it seems the weather is getting bad. I hate to eat and run but I'd rather head home before it gets worse. I hate walking in the rain." He surreptitiously stuffed a few sweets into his pocket as he pushed away from the table and gave the dog sitting at his feet a gentle pat. "I'll see you sometime later this tenday, I hope your cousin's schoolmate enjoys the caftan!"

 

[JustinCase]

"Indeed," Grimnir replies to Mornok as the two dwarves look outside the window at the gathering clouds and increasing winds.

"I fear that Umberlee has sent this storm, although why I do not know. It'll probably get worse gradually until midnight, so remember to sacrifice something important in water if her wrath threatens to overtake you."

The priest considers possibilities for why his goddess may have sent this gail now; after all, he has been away from shore for a while now. Did he forget a day of import, or miss a moment of prayer? He cannot fathom any particular reason, so the dwarf shrugs and gets back to his drink.

"It'll pass," he decides.

 

[Envisioner]

An abrupt gust rattles the bar's windows ominously. The bartender, a portly human who briefly introduced himself as Roque, says "Let's make it last call, fellows. I'd normally stay open later, but I don't like the sound of that weather."

(Not ignoring Lyle, just need more time to think of what I want to do with him next.)