"Okay. Let's look at this logically. When and where was the las time anyone saw the lass? I'll go there and see if there are any tracks or signs of a struggle".
After making enquiries around the town you discern the following:
- No-one up and about has seen or heard Jenneleth since she left The Baron of Mutton last night. They all speak highly of her, and show genuine concern for her well-being.
- You've not roused the night-watchman yet - the drunkard dwarf - Old Grizzler.
- Spiro's canny eye locates a piece of jewellery that was Jenneleth's - a small enamelled locket that bears a portrait of Andren and a lock of his hair. It lay discarded in the muddy thoroughfare from the ford into the village...
- The captives no nothing (in the case of Marko) or are saying nothing (in the case of the groggy Carlanis).
Andren has an identical locket which you can assume carries a matching portrait of Jenneleth...
Regardless of the results of his search by the thoroughfare, Ulfbrecht will pay a visit to the night watchman. Once there, he raps on the door firmly and calls out, in Dwarven: "Hail, dark-sentinel. Seek I words with ye, if ye are able!"
Most puzzlingly there appears to be booted tracks that arrive from half-bridge The Folly, but then at the sight of the possible abduction the same tracks also just disappear just as Jenneleth's do...
This small and ramshackle hus strikes you like a peasant's hut, nestles beside the Churnett river, where folk say its occupant can be found fishing when he isn't in the Silver Crown drowning himself in ale.
Universally known in Milborne as Old Grizzler, the white-haired dwarv is a former miner is of uncertain age. He's obviously old, and walks with a gnarled pick-axe handle as a walking stick, but he can still walk home after downing an awful lot of ale. Tho' aged, his ability to see in the dark means the town employ him as a nightwatch... albeit an unreliable one.
At Ulf's hail, a grumbling voice answers from within;
"Who is it that spoils the sleep of Grizlündur with words of my people nay long spoken?"
Ulfbrecht clears his throat and speaks more clearly after receiving an answer.
The strained voice continues from within;
"Leave me be Deeprunner of Glorigirn. My nyght eyes are not what they were. My cups were deep. What I saw makes nay sense to me nor will it to you... least of all these langshanks who cast aside me... a Master Pickman! I carry nay weight here, so let them fret and hunt. Leave this white beard to draughts with his ghosts Ulfbrecht Thragimthal."
Ulf frowns at the door; a strange experience for him to encounter a fellow who takes no pride in their tasks and who lets the toils of time and circumstance gather like rust in their sense of duty. Is this what choosing a life on the surface leads to? He holds his arms and chews his thoughts for a moment.
After Ping finishes getting ready, she looks about fretfully for a moment before scurrying off after Ulf. The young gnomish woman is no tracker, but she does understand the dwarven tongue and grows curious at Auld Grizzler's hints of something queer happening in the night. She wonders if perhaps Ulf saw something that makes him more apt to believe in far-fetched tales that she did not have the skill to discern and tugs on his sleeve to get his attention before whispering her question to him.
"What did you see where you found Lady Jenneleth's locket?"
At Ulf's gravel words the door to the hovel opens and out shuffles Auld Grizzler - Venerable Dwarv
He wears boots of rags, simple miner's garb, worn with age and the tartan trews showing clan colours long since faded... like the clan tattoos upon his brow and head.
At his waist a simple Puukko fishing knife sits.
He blinks, peering at you all with a scowl, his gnarled hand gripping a battered old pipe.
His voice is weary and Common haltering and accented;
"I'll nei invite ye in. I'm nei one fir guests..."
The old dwarv shakes his head, blinking at your assembled number;
"What I saw makes nei sense... Ye'll think minn addled, drunk or worse... wrong in minn heid. Now leave me to minn pipa!"
Ulf gives Grizzler a most dwarvenly nod as the miner makes his egress. Despite the bristly interaction thus far, it was good to make moot with one of his own; a small whiff of the caverns below.
"īower hām, īower laws, lode-striker," Ulfbrecht says flatly. He studies the man for a moment, filing him away on a stone ledger in his mind. "A stern judge of tales I am not, ye will find, so long as speak ye the truth of īower eyes and ears. Nor am I unfamiliar with queer sights. These folc by their word cross-ed blades with some draugr. Spicst what ye know, and be left in peace with mine thancs."
He adds, in Dwarven;
Hearing the old dwarf's insistence that they wouldn't believe him and Ulf's description of the tracks, Ping's mind puts the clues together.
"Someone came up to her and they both just vanished. Poof! Didn't they," she blurts out as things click into place.
Spiro just stands around scratching his head and wondering why he can't find any signs.
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The old dwarv listens intently to Ulf, shaking his head slowly before Ping's posed logic breaks his melancholy with a brow raise and waving on his pipa;
"Disappear'ed? NAY! Lass I wish it were so... I do! A shadow did approached her an' it thought it one o' the newcomers the taprooms 'ave spoken of. Then it spoke, low an' whisper'ed like... Then she froze, like a toad in wyntertide..."
He pauses, grappling with his memory;
"... Then it grabbed her... an... an spread great bat wings from its back as it flew off with fair Jenneleth! I thought it a man afore then... Now I fear it was a daemon or one o' the risen! A creatyre o' the nyght!! Here! In Haranshyre!"
The old codger's eyes fill with fear as every shadow becomes a threat...
Ping pales as she learns what Auld Grizzler truly saw last night.
"I thought the goblin skeletons were bad," she says quietly as she watches the old dwarf with eyes as wide and round as saucers. "That's a lot worse! Which way did they go? That may be our only hope of tracking them and finding out Lady Jenneleth's fate."
The half-orc is stoic. "Which way did it fly?"
Mos, slightly skeptical of the old dwarf's story, continues to listen to see if there is some noticeable flaw in any of the details he relates.
"Can you tell us anything more about this beast? Smells, Sounds...anything might help!"
At word of Jenneleth's disappearance , Eireachdail brows furrow and his mien become as serious as anyone has seen. He follows at each juncture, his face glowering like a thunder cloud, until it clears somewhat at the old Grizzler's story, his eyes widening in wonder and fear.
His head begins spinning, filtering through all of the stories and legends and tales he's read or heard, trying to use the old dwarf's description to put a name to the creature that took fair Jenneleth...
The old dwarv pauses, tattooed brow furrowing, then points back toward the half-made bridge known locally as The Folly that ends partly across the Churnett River.
"It flew off yonder... into the nyght. She were stiff, like an old corpse and it took 'er... an' I just let it..."
Auld Grizzler's croaky voice wavers, and his aged eyes become dewey. Mos' question he composes himself;
"It were the size o' a man Little Maester. Not a big 'un... but not a little 'un neither. Wings o' a bat... an' the whiff o' an odd smell. See since retirin' from the mines I heard the callin' o' Rissinis - The Catcher. So's I fish... Fish 'em all I do - Churnett, Oldscutt an Cutter Brook... So I knows my fish... What I smelt were rotian fæsc ... rotted fish..."
He eyes your company, shaking his head
"Ye think me mad..."
Nothing specific springs to mind - many demons, monsters and creatures of the night exhibit bat wings and ability to charm or silence their victims - but rarely together. Throw in Auld Grizzler's assertion of a rotten fish smell and your completely draw a blank.
What does trigger in his library of rumours, tales and lore picked up through countless nights of debauched entertainment is the obscure mention that the nearby village of Harlaton is rumoured to be haunted by a murderous bat wing'ed winter daemon every 9 years. The villagers call it Burbalæng... though it is likely little more than a bogey-man to scare children and keep vagabonds and the like away...
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Ping shakes her head, while no scholar, one doesn't study the arcane without learning a thing or two about demons.
"I fear you're not. It makes too much sense with what Ulf has found," she says. She rubs her arms as she looks off in the direction Auld Grizzler pointed. "I know enough about demons to know they are real, and I've seen madmen before. They don't question their sanity."
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Eireachdail listens intently as the old dwarf describes the creature. He turns away gazing at the sky, ruminating, rubbing his nose in concentration.
"The Higgly-Piggly of Newset Downs...no. The Ripper of Castle Rook...no. The Screaming Crud of Old Malvern's Cellar...no. Harlteon... Harlteon... Harlteon... Harlteon....The Burbalæng! " he shout-whispers to himself.
Turning back to the old dwarf, "Tell me, is there a town called Harlaton nearby?"
Ulf strokes his beard and ponders for a minute, trying to puzzle out some answers to the situation but he finds himself at an unfortunate loss when it comes to winged kidnappers. He was hoping some of the traveled surface-folk might have some idea, but so far at least is seems to elude them as well, save the singer's musings of tales.
"Cave-flockers...bats know I, but not bats of a mann's breadth that tæcþ a mǣl o' folc in but one swēope. fūl ġesċeafte ārīsan ..." "May hap this... sċeadu..shadow..makes moot with the slave-makers. They count among them a death-prēost...a thrall to dark gods. Miten be he found a thrall of 'is own in this mann-bat..." he looks over towards the river and sighs. " If'n it smell o' rotian fæsc, miten it com from the water-vein? Wings 'n water a queer mix, mind ye..."
"What's this Harlaton tun, song-spinner?"
"Well it seems this Harlteon is our only lead... and it's headed in the right direction. Let's make haste. The longer we wait the more advantage the kidnapper has".
Spiro grabs his stuff and starts off in that direction.
"Um, isn't our lead that way," Ping asks as she points in the same direction that Auld Grizzler pointed.
Eireachdail scratches his chin at Ulf's question, his mind working to figure out the Dwarf's heavy accent, "Just a fable I heard one day...but the description fit."
He then looks at Spiro and Ping with puzzlement, then back to the old guard, "Hurry , man....Harleton...does it exist? and where!"
The Old Dwarv nods slowly, nothing in Eireachdail's tale registering with the greybeard.
"Aye... Harleton is but a wee thorp. Nothing happens there - save the odd argument o'er crop pricing. Reckon yer leg was pulled Skald."
He shrugs, not sure what to make of fables nor rumours.
"Course if it be the risen dead, then reckon Ahlaksız'll have some connection to it. That bastred dēaþcrafta was put down centuries back, but I reckons he haunts this realm still... from his rotten grave in the Glǣming Glode !"
Ping makes note of the name Ahlaksiz and of the mention of the Gleaming Glade.
"I fear Spiro is right. We need to make haste. I just hope we're not too late to save Lady Jenneleth," the little gnome says, quietly amazed at what she's saying. Since when did she care about anyone else besides herself or her father?
"Indeed...let's get a move on to this thorp and see if she has truly been kidnapped and taken there...is this Gleaming Glade possibly on the way to Harleton?"
The halfling seems drawn into this rescue as much as the others.
Grizzler shakes his head;
"Nay. Tis deep within the Hardlow Woods... near the Great Rock Dale... Opposite way..."
He whistles through his teeth as his tattooed brow furrows;
"Dale been hame to Orc, Goblens an' Hobbegoblen o'er the years. Dangerous place. They haunt the Hardlow's along with Worg an worse... Best avoided I reckon, even fir well-heel'd vagabondi like yerselves..."
His words die off as a commotion approaches - Jenneleth's Da; Haldelar at the head of a mob of townsfolk. His face red with anger and tears.
"WELL DID THE DRUNKARD TELL YE NOWT? OR JUST BABBLE ADDLINGS FROM HIS CUPS?"
Grizzler hand strays to the handle of his fish knife and he recedes back into his doorway. His eyes affix on Ulf;
"I'll not be a scapegoat for this crime Deeprunner of Glorigirn. There is still honour in these old bones an' I'll gut the first of them to question like an eel."
Ulf raises a brow. "Gleaming Glade ye say... the sama plæċe the wood-shaper Garyl spake." He turns his gaze to the others of his lot. "Say he that those that folgiaþ the pæþ..path..of the God-Ripere gaderiaþ there. If'n this nihtþēof lairs there...then be it the plæċe that maniġ..many of our roads meet."
When Jenneleth's father approaches and Grizzler makes his feelings known, Ulfbrecht turns to regard the newcomer's approach, positioning himself so he half blocks a clear line 'tween the anxious father and the anxious watchman. He replies to Grizzler out of the corner of his mouth..
"Gave us a lead, did he," Ulf says to the miller. "Eyed some deorc ġesċeaft take up the Lady n' part. Wager I Grizzler did nae speak on it as thought he none would pay fair mind to his report..n' true, such a sight miten seem ūtlendisċ for ye folc in this nice wic..village..but give faith to eyes that have seen such. Live ye not far from the wood where a..." Ulf pauses a moment to remember the surface word Garyld used to describe Ahlaksız. "..necromancer worked doerccræft...like as not to be fūl beasts about."
Ping looks from the mob to Auld Grizzler, wanting nothing more than to hide somewhere, but the old dwarf had told them where to start looking. It would be a poor repayment indeed to let him be killed by misdirected outrage. She puts a hand on his arm, hoping that with Ulf's words that would calm him.
"Not even three days have passed since we saw the bones of dead goblins rise, shedding their flesh like winter clothing. I wouldn't be so quick to judge what the Pickmaster here has sad as nothing more than the fruit of his cups," Ping says, silently wondering why she is sticking her neck out for someone she's just met. "We have a path to follow, and the trail grows old. Will it grow older while we argue over the fate of the one who has given us a place to start looking for your daughter," she asks Haldelar while hoping that none can guess that her heart is fluttering madly in her chest or how hard it is for her to keep her knees steady as she faces down the much bigger folk gathered to Haldelar's side.
Eireachdail nods at the old dwarf's words, and as is his wont, fixates on the proper names provided, Ahlaksız and Gleaming Glade, his mind wandering through the flotsam and foam of his memories...
He wanders a bit away in his reverie, ignoring the hubbub of the mob led by Jenneleth's father.
The burly miller scowls, but seems cowed, but still has his say;
"What village do ye speak of Master Dwarv? We would go there at haste... and as for our past - it is that. The Necromancer's bones were buried by Lord Palfray's Great-Grandsire Eorl Lothar and his goodly host. That evil is gone..."
The mob murmur in agreement, but Ping's words quiet them as quckly.
Haldelar rubs a meaty hand over his red forehead as his wife seeks to comfort him;
"Risen dead... Me daughter gone... Ah Jen what has become o' ye..."
Further murmurings spring forth from the villagers;
"Vagabondi always bring ill luck..."
"What can we do? Let these incomers go into the wyld. Let them face the gobelins, boggebears an' these risen dead!"
The Miller looks to the group;
"If servants of the God Reaper were at large then the Rangers will know... An' not Garyld - them that ward the land now!"
"Aye! Kuiper will know!"
"Let them seek his counsel..."
Ulf raises a brow at the mention of the rangers, eager himself to find out what he can about the Gleaming Glade.
"Where be these rangers? Kuiper? Seek I this Gleaming Glade, for huntiġe I these folc-takers for mine self, so if'n be there some-one to make moot with that can tell of this Glade, with them will I spece." He flicks an odd gaze at the gathered throng, slightly puzzled by their collective frantic fear, but he holds his caveborn tongue, reminding himself that he is topland now and such folc just have a different way about things. He keeps his focus on the miller. "Glade be our betst wager. Ord us to this Kuiper."
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Ping relaxes some as it appears that she isn't about to be lynched. She holds her tongue, waiting for their answer to Ulf's questions.