Episode 1: A Helping Hand

The other elderly woman asks, "Did you want to eat first?" Behind her, the table has been set for six.

The woman fills some small bowls with a milky liquid, which tastes of sweetened coconut. Her lips are tightly pursed as Rhodrick comments upon the Skipper.

The Skipper snorts. "That won't help, but I'm obliged of your thoughtfulness. The last group that was here was one of them that figured payment wasn't enough for their trouble, and I owed them an arm and a leg." She chuckles to herself.

The meal consists of a seafood stew, with barley and some vegetables. Skewers of charred whole fish are drizzled with an oil that has a bit of a pungent odor, but provides a pleasant taste to the white meat and crispy skin. The Skipper and the woman leave you to your meal, though of course the Skipper isn't going anywhere.

The woman looks to the Skipper for approval, and with a nod she leads you out of the house.

You are taken down a well-worn path wide enough for a wagon. As you leave the edge of the village, you enter a wooded area of ferns and dracaena, mulberry and ironwood. The sunlight at this time filters through the trees and lends a healthy glow, accompanied by songbird to fill the air.

After walking for an hour, you enter into an area of cultivated land. Swaths of forest have been clear-cut to allow crops, and the fields rise and fall with the rolling hills. You see a variety of crops such as barley, millet, and sugar cane. Ground vegetables and fruits can be seen in other fields.

The woman takes you down a road past a farmhouse. You see three young children working the field while an older woman threshes grain. All pause their work to watch you pass. From the house itself, an elderly man stands by the door.

You pass another farmhouse some distance further. Here, an elderly man and woman are harvesting vegetables from the earth. Both look up and silently watch you.

The road becomes less obvious as you progress, with patches of wild grass and shrubs interrupting the path. The terrain is starting to slope upward towards the mountain and there is less suitable land for farming. The forest is still thick and stands close to the road, encroaching on what little fields can be found.

Here, after another 30 minutes of walking, the woman deviates from the road and takes a side path into the forest. She picks her way over exposed roots and uneven ground until you arrive at a house. You do not see anyone outside, and it is completely dark inside from what you can tell with the open windows and door. "Here's the place that was attacked recently," she says, pointing to the structure.

Golwen finds many tracks surrounding the house, but it will take some time to determine if they were made by the residents, the attackers, wild animals, or any villagers that came by to discover what happened.What Golwen does find is a lot of dried blood. Splatter stains the walls near the open door and a small dark slick indicates where it pooled. He deduces that someone was standing in the doorway and suffered at least two heavy blows with a blunt object, slumped over either dead or unconscious, and judging from how small the slick was and the fact there is no impression of a body, was taken away. Near the doorway is a broken garden hoe.

The elf can see that entry was also gained through the windows. A few have been smashed inward and the smears of mud and dirt show that someone or something climbed in.

Jandral can detect nothing arcane in the area, though he does notice a few totems of protection and longevity, likely dedicated to agricultural deities.

Together, he and Parallel look over the tracks, with the halfling doing his best to keep Jandral from stepping in them. They manage to pick out the fact that there are prints of bare feet. Parallel determines that the prints are bipedal humanoids, similar in height and weight to an average human. At the moment, neither Parallel nor Jandral are able to determine which tracks enter and which leave.

The farmhouse is nearly surrounded by forest on all sides, save for the path leading to the road. While not overly thick and dense with growth, there are enough trees that could conceivably hide a person's approach until they neared within 15 feet.

Investigating the area below the windows shows the same humanoid tracks. Golwen and Jandral are unable to determine if it's just one humanoid or several.