Chapter Two: The Hippocampus on the Cracked Lintel

Shamush surveys the room. The atmosphere and clientele of the Coiled Rope are fairly unremarkable; the place is warm and well-lit and the people have the look of townsfolk, middle-aged farmers and craftspeople, parents and older children and young couples. Nobody strikes him as suspicious or out-of-place. Aside from the doors the party came through, there's a side entrance and a door to another part of the inn, a door to the kitchen behind the bar, and stairs going up to the rooms for rent.

Leth doesn't notice anything troubling, either.

So I'm assuming Vad, Leth, and Mordred will be going to the house, and the rest of you might linger and/or follow behind at some distance? All of you privy to Harmon's statements can tell he's trusting you with some reluctance, and suddenly bringing in another three party members might cause him to reconsider.

Vad, Mordred, and Leth follow Rolley out of the inn to the Koal family home on the west side of town. The house is large and in good repair, with a well-tended garden surrounding it. Inside, Rolley pokes at the hearth fire and makes awkward small talk about their animals and the vegetables and herbs they're growing while two girls of about twelve -- twins, from the looks of it -- peer down at you from a sleeping loft above the main room. The furnishings in the house are finely made, and there are expensive decorative objects, woven rugs, painted pottery. Over the course of your idle talk with Rolley you gather that the Koals own the town's general store, and are quite well-off.

After a little while, Harmon and his wife arrive. He sits down beside the hearth and lights a pipe, taking a few deep drags and blowing long plumes of aromatic smoke before coming to the matter at hand.

"I don't know what you've heard already, but here's how it came to me. The ranger Kligson found me and Rolley at the store and told us he'd been talking to a girl at the Toad and Skull, a young thing no more than seventeen or eighteen, who wanted him to show her to a passage through the Badgerways to Hazard. She'd told him she was being followed by some sort of...witch-cult, and she feared they'd kill her if they found her, and she'd only be safe when she got to Hazard. He thought she was talking nonsense, but that she might be in some kind of real danger.

"He said she was armed, too, so we rounded up Vicar Jon and Dalt Mecrin who were in the store at the time, for backup, and we followed Kligson to where he was set to meet back up with her and, well, such as it is, we jumped her. Took away her sword and tried to march her back here to see what her story was and what we could do to help her. I've got daughters of my own, and I don't take to letting scared young girls wander about in danger without doing what I can for them. If whoever she thought was following her didn't kill her, the Badgerways surely would.

Harmon sighs. "Well, she was faster and stronger than I had her pegged for. She hit me -- hard -- in a, a, disabling spot." Rolley lets out a snort of amusement, which Harmon quickly silences with a glance. "Gave us the slip, ran like hell. Kligson and Dalt followed her all the way to the Almeri farm, but they lost her there." He shakes his head. "Kligson went after her. Said that as best as he could figure, she'd go to the King's Cradle, which is the entrance to the Badgerways most folks have heard of and does in fact link up to an old smuggler's tunnel that bypasses the Milvil Bridge. He planned to try to get there ahead of her and talk some sense into her, try to get her to someplace actually safe. King's Cradle is about thirty-five miles from here. It's been six nights and five days and he's still not back. I'll tell you boys, I have a bad feeling about this."

Harmon gets up and cracks his neck, sighs again. "That's all I can tell you because that's all I know. Except for this one other thing. She left her pack behind when she ran off. I looked through it, there wasn't much in it. Change of clothes, food, camping gear. But the girls were snooping through it this morning. They found something else. A hidden pocket." He walks over to the wall, pulls out a brown knapsack from under a chair, reaches in and produces a small, dark gray tile. He hands it to Vad. "This is what was in the pocket. I don't know what it means, but she took some pains to hide it."

Etched on the tile is a rough drawing of an old-fashioned stone doorframe. The lintel is cracked down the middle, and just above it is a sea-creature, a hippocampus.

Mordred rummages through the knapsack, finding inside a bedroll, flint and steel, a lantern and two flasks (one full of oil, one empty), three days' worth of trail rations, a folded-up tarp, a whetstone, a waterskin, a short bow, nine arrows, and a spare set of underclothes and breeches. He also manages to drop the knapsack for no obvious reason and tear the stitching on the hidden pocket as he feels inside it to see if anything else is in there. Harmon also shows the party the short sword and dagger he took from her. There's nothing remarkable about any of it.

"Cross the river and head south-by-southwest," Harmon says. "When you reach the foothills, you'll find a settlement called Five Stones. Two miles due west, there's a hill and on top of that hill is the rock formation they call the King's Cradle." He walks over to the door and takes a blue cloak hanging from a peg on the wall. The hem of the cloak is embroidered with a fine, intricate vine pattern. "Kligson wears a cloak much like this. If you see him, show him this one. He'll recognize it as mine." He pauses a moment, half-smiles. "If he still doesn't trust you, ask if he remembers the baths at Eelnest Hot Springs."

"The Loder farm about a mile south of here will sell you horses, but then you got to get them over the river. I'd look for mounts on the other side, if I were you."

Harmon is okay with you taking Zora's stuff.

Leth, we'll say that was your History roll, and you can make two additional ones for Arcana and Religion.

Leth tries to puzzle out the significance of the drawing on the tile. Nothing obvious jumps out at him, but it does seem noteworthy that the hippocampus is a creature associated with Nethuns, the principal god of Sthombo.

"One question before you go," Harmon says. "This 'witch-cult.' Do you know anything about it? Do you believe the girl was telling the truth?"

"The Loder farm about a mile south of here will sell you horses, but then you got to get them over the river. I'd look for mounts on the other side, if I were you."

Oh, I assumed a bridge. Is there a ferry?

Your bridge options are either proceed to the Milvil Bridge or backtrack quite a ways. Ferries are certainly an option, but you take Harmon's point that finding a ferry for six horses might be costly and/or time-consuming.

Harmon seems to be a well-to-do man with a good life who has chosen to trust you three and open his home to you out of a genuine concern for both his friend Kligson and for Zora. You feel confident that you can take him at his word.