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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doghead" data-source="post: 6101439" data-attributes="member: 8243">DAY THREE, AT HENRI'S HOUSEAfter Henri has inspected the gnolls (he insists) and checked their wounds and their bindings, he spends a few minutes casting a spell. Returning to the kitchen he spends another quarter of hour pottering around making tea and setting straight the table and some chairs and a bench. He won't be hurried, and despite his obvious fatigue there is a quiet strength of purpose about the man. He asks lots of perceptive questions about the events since the you arrived at his house. He is particularly interested in any comments that the gnolls made. He shows little interest in what they had on them, with the exception of the scroll, which surprises him a little. By the time the water is boiling, he seems done. "So," he begins once the tea has been served and those who want to be are seated, "First of all I should I apologise for all the trouble I have caused you. I didn't expect to be gone for nearly as long as I was. Things got a little more complicated than I expected. Had you but arrived a day later, things would have been much simpler."You get the impression that he doesn't just mean for you."Firstly the potions for the Chancellor. I don't have all of them finished just yet. But I haven't forgotten them. I will give you a letter to take to the Chancellor explaining the situation. I sure that he will be ... understanding."And please don't fret to much about getting back to the village on time. I can help you with that."Henri pauses for a moment to sip his tea. It also seems like his is sorting out his thoughts for what is to come next."I could try and convince you that the gnolls are just a raiding party from the mountains, and that you were just unlucky enough to get in their way. But I suspect that you are sharp enough to suspect that that is not the whole story. As it is not. "What I am going to tell you is known by only a few, myself and a few of the trappers, Kovic and a couple of others in town, and your Chancellor. I know the Chancellor knows because it was I who told him. Only, until now, he has not known who I was. He only knew me by the alias I used in our correspondence. When you speak to him, he will of course put two and two together. "The gnolls you met are from the mountains, the western mountains to be more precise. But they are not so much a raiding party as a search party. They are here looking for a small tribe of gnolls that fled from the western mountains and now live here, in these mountains, as they have now for more than a decade. Dark things are happening in the western mountains. Things that I believe are part of a greater pattern of events. The gnolls living in exile here in the mountains fled as a result of the events in the west, and as such, may be useful allies in the future."I know that the idea of gnolls as allies may be strange one, given the common conception of them as savage monsters. But it has its precedents, as I believe  Jan here has already started to suspect. Indeed," he adds looking directly at the bard, "you might find some time spent with the Songteller, which is what the gnolls call their bards, extremely illuminating. Several epics, I suspect, would need some revising.""But until that time, the fewer people who know that there are gnolls in these mountains, the better. If word gets out, well, people will get hysterical. Every lost animal or bandit attack will become a gnoll raid, and soon there will be soldier and adventurers crawling through the mountains looking for fame and treasure."So, I am asking you, keep what you know to yourself. At least until you have had the chance to take to your Chancellor."[sblock=Ghostcat]Libros is pretty sure that Henri is not telling the whole story, but sees nothing to indicate that the story Henri is telling is not at truthful as far as it goes.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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