The celebration begins to peter out near midnight, but continues in one form or another for most of the rest of the night.
Party goers wander home in groups, or alone, or if somewhat lucky, in pairs.
Kendra, stifling a yawn, bids a good night.
"Don't stay out too late, now" she scolds mockingly. "You've much relaxing and recuperating to do tomorrow."
"All the more reason for us to party til we drop now."
"It's off to Lepidstadt we'll be soon, Alendru, to carry messages to some of Petros' fellow scholars there. Shall we ask after this Montagnie Crowl for you?"
"If you wish to. If you cover my cost of purchase you can even bring the damned thing with you and return it to him. I'm sure he'll be more than a little relieved and rewarding."
When he has a moment to talk to the party privately, Peredur will urge spending the money. "For look you, a book such as this be worth more than we'd pay, so even if th' owner is nowhere to be found we can still make money by selling th' book."
Sour Heck spends his weeks in Ravengro with Talia in the professor’s library, sifting it for clues to her heritage.
After dinners he disappears to work on a mysterious project.
Eloise also spends a fair bit of time in the late professor's library, doing research into the Whispering Way.
Other than that, she spends some time cloistered with Alendru and their respective spellbooks...
She also asks about this Montagnie Crowl, of whom she had never heard before.
About a week after the harrowing of Harrowstone, Sour Heck cajoles the party into meeting after dinner at Kendra’s.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the necromancers that killed old Lorry,” he says. “But I haven’t thought of any way out of the obviously suicidal task of trying to track them down and bring them to justice. Maybe if they didn’t have awesome magic powers, fearsome undead minions, and a truely impressive name, we’d be a match for them.”
“Well, I can’t do anything about their awesome powers and fearsome minions--those are problems for you heroes. But maybe we can have an impressive name of our own.”
“Welcome, friends, to the first official gathering of the Hawthorn Society.”
Sour Heck produces a bundle of black fabric he’d been sitting on, and with a snap of his wrist drapes it over Kendra’s dinner table. It’s a great black war banner, embroidered in gold thread and edged with supple leather. The emblem is a thorny thicket of a rose bush with the crown of Ustalav supported atop it, growing from a skull split by Eloise’s black blade. Worked into the branches are the letters HS intertwined, done in the same style and font as the Harrowstone ‘H’ that appears on the masterwork weapons and armor the party took from the prison and now carries.
Sour Heck runs his hand affectionately over the banner. “Reminds me of the days when I was trying to be a skald; one of a skald’s duties is to carry your war band’s pennant. Other duties include singing your cheiftan’s praises and getting cut down first in battle. I decided that was no life for me...couldn’t come up with many good rhymes for ‘Gunther’”.
“But this should serve to remind us of why we’re doing this; old Lorry wrote his name on the inside of his robes.” The bard points to the upper corner of the banner, where the words Professor Lorrimor, written in his old friend’s neat handwriting, are just barely visible.