Robert seems ready to break out into a long speech about always looking out for the community, but upon hearing the priest and Gunnar's retort turns on his heel and says as walking out the door. "Good now that that's settled. Let's go. We need to find my brother. Tell anyone looking for us we are heading generally west and a bit north. Our path should be easy to track."
”Enough of this. Deputy, take the barbarian into custody. You can’t honestly just let a wanted fugitive walk out of town.”
Papus hesitates. ”With all due respect, Banker, are you really denying the word and authority of your own coin knight?”
Triarius sputters for a moment. ”John, surely you don’t want the woman who has somehow taken your son to go free!”
John MacIntyre looks at Robert, then nods and replies, ”If Robert says she didn’t take Benji, then she didn’t. The real culprit is getting further and further away while you argue this.”
Triarius throws up his hands. ”The cohortes will deal with you all when he returns,” and he storms off.
John turns back to you as the priest exits. ”When do we leave?”
So it was a surprise when, late in the evening the day before last, Cohortes Mallond Finchus rode into town. The Abadarian inquisitor, cohortes for the northern parts of Krearis prefecture, has come to form well-armed search parties to scour the wilderness around Lyon's Brook for signs of the fugitive's presence. He also brought a wanted poster with a 2,000 gp reward for her capture.
"I could have sworn the reward was just for capture.." Fezzan mutters to himself, then shrugs. "I suppose Cohortes Finchus will pay it."
As dreams of piles of coins fade from his eyes, he returns to the matter at hand. "I guess we leave now. If the person who took Benji is the same one who's been taking the dogs, we've got a pretty good lead on how to track them down."
Robert stops part way to the door "That was easier than I thought it was going to be." He walks over to his father and says "Dad, thank you for believing in me. She truly had nothing to do with Benji and there is a much more serious threat to this town than her. I am glad you have offered to come with us but I think Mom might need you here. I am not going to argue about it though. That is between you two. We need to get going. Any chance we could get some more trail rations? I don't know how long we will be out."
”My son is out there, and if you have some way of finding the woman who took him, I’m coming.”
Robert nods to his father "Ok, do you have a weapon?" He turns to the others and says "Let's gather some more rations and get out of here."
As they move out of the building he looks for Tomos. If no one else is around he says to him quietly "You might want to head home and stay out of sight so no one remembers you were around us."
"Fezzen if you want money so badly you can help me sell the skinnings. I'm stuck with you all it appears for the long haul anyway and I don't intend to do it lugging this stuff everywhere," she says, wondering if their was a wash basin somewhere she could use quickly. She still looked somewhat the mess.
John nods. Grabbing his quarterstaff from the corner he hugs his wife and heads out with you. Grabbing some more rations, you make your way..where?
Euda almost speaks up to sat that she has some rations left in Fred's bags, but quickly begins to doubt that they would get such a large group through more than a day or two. Instead she quietly follows along to whichever store the others decide to sell the scales and buy supplies at.
I'm not sure there are any stores in Lyon's Brook which would be interested in buying the scales. They're more of something to sell to travelling merchants, of whom there are currently none in town. You could try to sell them to the blacksmith for making armour, but he'd never be able to pay you the full market value for all of them.
Seeing as how the town could never afford the buying of the scales at full cost, she'd take it to the blacksmith to get whatever she could from it.
Taking the scales to Ewald, he looks them over with eager interest.
”I’ve seen green dragon scales before, and I think these are a nicer shade of green. I wish I could give you what they’re worth, but you’d be better off waiting for a merchant to come through. If you’d rather though, instead of selling them to me, I could make a suit of hide armour with them and keep the surplus as payment for the time and supplies.”
Ewald looks both puzzled and incredulous. He then proceeds to school the paladin of Abadar in maths.
”You and I both know you could sell these scales for 500 gp to a merchant. The armour I could make for you with these scales would have a market value of roughly 630 gp. Under customary rules of mercantilism on Taldor, I could expect to charge you 315 gp to craft the armour, and you would still have to supply the scales. Therefore, in reality, I’m charging you 185 gp for 315 gp worth of work, so maybe I should ask you to arrange a credit for me at the general store!”
"Fine then, we'll take whatever we can get for them. I just want to turn so.e profit," she says, not the biggest fan of economic talk while so unclean.
Euda wonders how they plan to buy supplies if they're trading the scales for armor, but decides not to interfere with the adults' negotiation since she knows so little of business.
Ewald agrees to the deal and you leave your scales. He then asks for which of you he is making this armour, so he can take measurements.
With that done, you are able to procure new supplies, rations, etc. Sometime during that whole process, Tomos has slipped away, though Bonita stays right with you, mostly offering comfort to Robert's father.
"Where would you like to start?" she asks when you're ready to go.
Robert replies to Bonita "The way I see it we have two choices: We can assume it is the same person as the dognapper and pick up their trail where we left off or we can start at our farm and look for a fresher trail a ways from the farm. We didn't find the dognapper trail until we got a bit away from where things happened. The two should join up at some point."
Maria would have it made for anyone that wants it, not needing such for herself.
”That plan could work, or we could head straight to the Verduran Forest and start our search there,” Bonita says.
"It's a good plan, time is off the essence. I've already had enough of Abadarian merchants," she says wiping herself up in a washbasin barrel, "No offense Gunnar."
"Seems as good a plan as any."
Fezzan tags along for the supply run.
Robert looks at Bonita and his father "I don't suppose either of you have much food on you for the journey? I'll buy each of us a weeks worth and then we head out to where we left the trail off."
"My familiar and I require little food thank you, but if you suggest we prepare for several days then I shan't not complain," she says, walking with them all noe properly cleaned, "His last known location would be a good start."
As usual, Euda quietly follows along with the older members of their unusual band of detectives.
You gather your supplies and make haste back to the MacIntyre farm, which John shows you the area of Benji's disappearance. As Robert's father says, there's a clear trail leading about fifty feet into the woods, and then it just vanishes.
Maria looks around, tapping her staff along as they tried to look for the missing boy, "Maybe turning the boy into a newt would have been a better fate than whatever trouble this is Jervis," she says under her breath.
Between the three of you, you are able to match the DC 20 Perception check.
"Look at this, blood. I don't think I have anything that could track such a thing," Maria points out from their collective snooping.
Robert shakes his head at the sight of the rock but uses it as a starting point to try and track the kidnapper.
Bonita shakes her head as Robert continues to search for tracks.
”You won’t find any tracks. I am virtually certain that our quarry is a druid, as I had seen her several times while I was hiding on the moors. A wild woman travelling between the Verduran Forest and Lyon’s Brook, initially in the company of a great wolf and later smaller dogs from the town. The trail you were following to this point was that of your brother, but if it’s gone, she was likely carrying the boy, probably to prevent you from doing exactly what you’re trying.”
Fezzan groans with frustration. "Well looks this was a waste of time. I guess we should head to Verduran Forest and see if we can pick up any trail there. We should be able to find some sign of the dogs if nothing else."
"If the dogs are all we can track," Euda questions tentatively, "then should we head back to where we stopped following the other trail?"
Eyes glowing, she chants lightly in her native tongue of Elven, a hand raised over the area to try and find just whatever she could.
There are no magical auras here.
Robert says "Right, into the woods. Let's get on this beast's trail again!"
You head in the general direction of where you last followed this person’s trail. After half an hour of walking, you happen upon another trail which Robert is fairly certain belongs to Benji, though the footsteps are quite irregular, suggesting that his brother is either injured or restrained, perhaps both. The angle they take leads you back to the trail you had followed earlier, arriving about a mile before the point where you fought the boar, at which point, Benji’s trail disappears again.
Euda looks around with a bit of a scowl. "It had to be this place that we stopped at?" she remarks uncomfortably.
"Actually... that is weird, right? That the trail would lead right here... if we're looking for a druid she might have summoned those boars to attack us because we were on the path she takes to town..."
Bonita shakes her head. ”Or she realized that somebody had followed her earlier trail, so she picked up the boy so as not to leave a new trail. Likely as not, if we fanned out, we’d pick up her new trail when she was too tired to keep carrying him.”
Robert looks around and says "Everyone spread out and lets look for that new trail, otherwise we will have to try following the old one."
Young Euda, nervous about wandering around near the site of the boar attack, sticks close to Gunnar and helps him in his search.