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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beale Knight" data-source="post: 2270065" data-attributes="member: 7033">The Tonk“Just about in time too,” Ren added. “Starting on getting pretty dark.”Indeed it was all but completely dark by the time the Heroes reached the distant village’s first outlying building, a small, 10’ by 20’ shack without even a proper door. The curtain hanging over the threshold did little to contain the bawdy singing within. Bessie and Ren grinned. “We’ve found the tonk,” Ren said.“The ‘tonk’?” Aneirin asked.“The wild tavern on the outskirts of town,” Bessie said. “I don’t know about this one, but the tonks in Maissen aren’t usually completely legal.”Ren smiled again. “Which is part of what makes them whole lots more fun.”“We should see what they know of where we are then,” said Kane. Bessie shook her head. “They’re not going to know anything useful,” she said. “Rather, if they do, they’ll have a hard time telling it.”Aneirin rubbed his chin. “We won’t take long then,” he said, urging Avarshan toward the shack.“Bessie’s right,” Ren said. “We’re better off just pushing on to the town.”The warrior ignored them and dismounted. “They must know something. I don’t care to walk into a situation without foreknowledge if I can help it.”“Didn’t he charge madly against a ‘lone’ farunk?” Ren whispered to Bessie, who snickered quietly. Kane dismounted as well, and Dumb Bear followed suit. With Aneirin they walked to the curtained entrance of the shack. The bawdy singing continued full strength as the revelers within sung the chorus about a woman, her sisters, and what they did with fish. Then Aneirin moved the curtain aside and stuck his head in. Silence fell like a tumbling wall. Aneirin looked the single room over, noting several kegs and about two dozen men, all humans and all but one awake with a drink in his hand. Wearing the simple clothes of fishermen, they all stared at the armored, sword bearing man standing in their doorway. “Excuse me,” Aneirin said politely. “I was wondering if you could tell me just where I’ve found myself.”The men inside looked back and forth at each other, their wide eyed eyes and slack jaws testimony to their utter confusion. After a moment a few of them managed to stammer out some syllables and unintelligible babble. Finally someone managed to get out, “who are you?”Aneirin reached to the recesses of his memory to recall what his father and lords and tried to teach him about diplomacy. With a smile he spread his hands away from his weapons and said, “just a traveler, and I’m afraid I’ve gotten a bit turned around.”Standing just out of sight, Kane translated the exchange for Dumb Bear, and they both chuckled at the humans’ confusion. “A what?!” Many of the men said this, some to Aneirin some to each other. Several others took long drinks from their mugs. Kane chose that moment to squeeze in past Aneirin. A gasp traveled through the room as the men stared at the fierce, but small, man with the pointed ears and piercing eyes. Kane returned the stare and for an eternity of seconds no one moved or uttered a sound. “Boo!” Kane shouted suddenly. Every man in the shack jumped back. Mugs hit the sandy floor across the length of the shack. Aneirin fixed the elf with a hard stare, but Kane only grinned and stepped back outside. Bessie and Ren, still on their mounts, shook their heads. “This is going nowhere,” Ren said as he slid from Sandy’s* back. He trotted over to the curtain where Aneirin was waiting for the drinkers to collect themselves – or where he was trying to figure out just how to get something useful from them. Ren wasn’t sure, but he had been in enough tonks to have an idea how to talk to the people in this one.  He stepped into the shack and found someone close at hand that looked less drunk than the others. “You,” he said with a point, “Who’s in charge of that town down the bay?”The man he pointed to looked to his left and right as if hoping Ren had actually been pointing to someone else. When no one stepped up to help him, he stammered out, “uh – Lastelle.”“Thanks,” Ren said, ducking back outside. He tugged Aneirin’s sleeve as he exited, prompting the warrior to come along as well. “That’s an interesting answer.”“How so?” asked Kane. “Lastelle was a brother to Maissen,” Aneirin answered as he climb atop Avarshan. “I don’t imagine they could mean him.”“It could be descendents of him,” Bessie said. “In the histories, Lastelle left with some followers in quest to find a way back to the old homeland. This could be as far as he got.”“The answers for sure don’t lay back there though,” Ren said. From Sandy, he pointed west. “Let’s see if we can get all the way there tonight and start finding them from whoever this particular Lastelle is.”As they rode, the Heroes left a small group of drinkers crowded in the doorway watching the strangers in disbelief. Kane glanced back at them. “What do you imagine their problem is?” he said. “They probably don’t get very many travelers up this way,” Bessie said. “Most Maisseners don’t know there’s other human settlements beyond the borders. They’d probably be just as frightened of mysterious strangers - mysterious, heavily armed strangers – dropping in on their marginally legal tavern.”“If there’s no where to travel to, there’s no such thing as a traveler,” Ren said.* Ren named his war lizard after the battle along the beach. As she delivered most damage with her claws, and the battle happened on the sand, Ren combined the two and named her Sandy Claws. He did this without any sense of irony or homage, as the poor hunter from Vaunth-on-the-Lake has never even heard of Tim Burton. Next: Lastelle Town, Evil Dragon Halflings!, "We've been expecting you"    POST 126Soon: The Old Temple in the Mountain</blockquote>

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