Cham Larringfass's page

There are only two places Skreed Gorewillow is likely to have stayed in Trunau: the Howling Hound and the Ramblehouse. With Marikel volunteering to question Othdan Meriman, Alicia steels herself to go back to visit Cham Larringfass.

The halfling greets Alicia with an unsurprising hostility, but when the girl explains she is investigating the saboteurs planted inside the town, Cham relents. Poring over the registers of the inn, between them they make a list of the supposed half-orc prospectors using false names. Cham insists up and down that none of them match the description of Skreed Gorewillow, though she admits that all of them wore surprisingly clean and expensive-looking clothes for their seemingly humble origins. Pressing her further, Alicia leads her to remember that they all wore broad-brimmed hats.

"I don't know why you're making a point of accusing my clientele," Cham objects. "None of these people, from Freley to Jass to Klozov, were even in town during the Twisted Nail attack. It's a matter of record that all of the saboteurs were 'guests' at that filthy flophouse of Meriman's. I suppose Sawyer's protecting him because he's human. Any trouble in town, blame it on the dwarves or the half-orcs or the halfings! I should've known them holier-than-thou busybodies from Lastwall would make common cause with him!"

The only other obvious connection Gorewillow might have in Trunau would be via his profession. He claims to be an agent acquiring objects for collectors; Lessie Crumkin might have done business with him.

Over at the Ramblehouse, where Dorn and Vhailor are eating in the increasingly-crowded common room, Cham Larringfass has heard similar rumors and regales her guests with them.

"Baseil Sawyer hired someone to take his daughter out of town. No, she has her Hopeknife; he just doesn't want to risk her having to use it! It's for ordinary folk to defend the town, I suppose," she sniffs. "I hear tell he sent all his valuables away with her as well so she's not left a pauper if the orcs overrun us all."

"They say the Crumkin house has a portal to a whole other dimension in the basement where Lessie stores her wealth and if the Twisted Nail make it to the Upper Quarter she has only to hop through herself and shut the door behind her to be safe as houses. I suppose we won't be seeing her in the Longhouse."

"I hear tell that Gorkis Meeson and Rabus Clarenston have rigged up a mechanism with his black powder and his moonshine to blow the orcs halfway to Isger if they reach the Longhouse. I say we'll be lucky if the pair of them don't blow all of us to the Boneyard by accident instead!"

"I'm planning to stay aunt, but my offer to help with the paperwork was only meant a temporary one... I'm a warrior now. The Dwarf folk saw to that. I suppose i'm asking for your help, aunt. I'm investigating the "suicide" of Kerst Grath. A few names have come up in connection with foul play. One of those names is "Melira"- I understand she sometimes stays here in the Ramblehouse"?

Cham's interest is piqued by the prospect of inside information on the hottest topic of discussion in town. She readily lays aside the paperwork and lowers her voice conspiratorially. "Melira ... aye, that's a guide from Freedom Town, brings in groups of travelers and vagrants from time to time. I've never liked that woman -- I swear she leaves behind fleas in the beds so we have to burn the straw and restuff the ticks after she sleeps in them -- but her coin's good so I can't turn her away." She scowls. "A trashy Lastwall girl from the mission was in here yesterday accusing a half-orc named Freley. I think he was one of the last flock of wolves in sheep's clothing she led into town. Are those church-folk looking to lay blame on the Ramblehouse? You watch out for their lying tongues ... and you'll tell your Auntie Cham if they're plotting against her, won't you?" she wheedles. "We Small folk need to stick together."

"Need a hand with the inventories Auntie Cham? Pretty sure this establishment's paperwork taught me to read you know... I can probably remember a lot of your processes? Tell me if I can turn that frown upside down!"

The halfling looks up, and her frown of concentration turns into a weary smile. "You're a good boy, Kaleb, and a sight for sore eyes to see you back from among the dwarves. I can't say I ever approved of sending you away from your own kind," (her tone turns a little sharp as she scrutinizes the young man for over signs of dwarven affinity) "but it seems to have done you no harm at any rate. Tell me, you're planning to stay, are you? I can put you to work here, easy as pie. Always more sweeping and painting to do ... or are you angling for an office job, double-checking numbers?"

Clearing her throat after the young human sweeps out, Banny squints at the tiny scratch left by the dagger. "Can't barely tell it's there," she says to Cham with forced, brusque cheer. "You want to go rattin' th' girl out to the priests for that little a thing, I guess that's your business, but I don't reckon you'd have much joy of her work iffen they did collar her. Anyhow, like I said, we're outta your hair, Cham."

Cham glares after Alicia, then hurries over to move the stepladder so she can climb up and assess the damage. "Lastwall trash," she snorts angrily, her nose inches from the wall. "Should have packed her off back to the paladins instead of burdening the honest folk of Trunau with her."

"If I looked under this layer of paint, I wouldn't find dried blood, would I?" she asks as she unsheathes her dagger.

"You scrape up my fresh paint, you'll find yourself repainting the room," Cham returns hotly. "Maybe the rooms on either side of it, too, if I go tell the priests at the mission you've been vandalizing my inn. I don't know what that damned cur is smelling, but Freley hasn't ever been in here, as far as I know."

"Clearly, 'Freley' was using this room, probably while he was still staying in the other one."

"I don't know a thing about that," Cham replies obstinately. "Just as likely, her dog's taken a liking to the smell of straw tick. Or someone cleaned the other room, then came in here to paint this one, and he's sniffing the wrong person."

Apart from a stepladder and a pile of rags and brushes with a pot of paint, there seems to be nothing in this room that didn't have a counterpart in the other. This mattress is rolled up and tied with a bit of twine on the bare bedstead and the chair is sitting atop the desk to leave space for the painters to maneuver all around the walls.

"If you think I'm letting that hound go door to door and sniff at my guests' belongings, you're crazy as a sheepherder," she says firmly. "Get it out of here."

"Your dog needs his nose examined," Cham protests. "This Freley, when he checked in, it was the first time I'd seen him. You can check my records. She already made me drag them all out this morning," she shrugs toward Alicia.

"Just coincidence we're painting now," she sniffs. "It's an inn: lots of rooms and lots of upkeep. We're always painting somewhere: finish with one room and move on to the next. It's like being a farmer; you don't weed your garden once and expect it to stay that way until harvest."

She turns to Banny. "Fellow took a knife? She told me it had to do with the Grath boy taking a flyer. What's this really all about?" The halfling's eyes narrow, flickering between suspicion and curiosity.

Having stopped to close I. P. Freley's erstwhile door behind her, Cham jogs up behind the other three women, red-faced and out of breath. "What are you--? You can't go breaking into my guest's rooms! Wait, that one's empty...."

The lock clicks beneath Alicia' tender ministrations, and the door opens to reveal a room much like the other, except that the bed and desk are pushed together in the middle of the floor. Approximately three-quarters of the walls display a fresh coat of whitewash, the dinginess accumulated by the unpainted remnant accentuated by the contrast.

"See? I told you!" Cham scowls. "Being painted. No one's stayed in this room for weeks."

Alas, it appears that Bumpus was only honing in on the bed as the object in the room heaviest with the scent he's following, the room's occupant having slept on it. There is nothing to be found beneath the mattress.

"Get this damned animal out of here!" Cham insists. "I'm running an inn, not a barnyard!"

"What?" the halfling squawks. "There are no tunnels in the Ramblehouse. We're at ground level. We don't even have a basement!"

Bumpus pushes under the mattress with his nose, turns around in a few tight circles end to end, and wags his tail broadly at Jess as she grabs the end of his lead once more.

"He'll ruin the finish!" Cham protests. "You'll be paying to have the door redone, Jess Meeson!"

"And who says I was speaking about the dog?" Cham sneers back as Banny rushes in to smooth things over.

"Sorry, Cham! Don't mind us! Dog's just trackin' a scent! Sorry-- oop, watch out there!" Banny says, steadying someone who Bumpus nearly knocked over in his rush through.

"Banny Kneebreaker!" the halfling spits, pleased to have another target for her venom. "Is this another of your damned drunken pranks?"

The common area of the Ramblehouse is a jumble of mismatched furniture, tables, chairs, and overstuffed couches, some human-sized and others scaled for Small folk, in approximately equal numbers. At the moment, the room is in even greater a state of disorder than usual, due to the large hound trailing a half-elf on a length of rope taking up most of the empty floor space. Patrons who moments ago were enjoying coffee and gossip are fleeing for their rooms.

An infuriated Cham Larringfass is standing atop the check-in counter. "Jess Meeson!" she howls. "What in the Nine Hells do you mean by bringing your filthy, flea-bitten, good-for-nothing carcass into a respectable establishment?"

"Sawyer?" she replies derisively. "Can't see him coming down off of his high horse to talk to a wandering prospector. Leastaways, if he did, he never did it down here."

Alicia blinks slowly at Cham. "I.P. Freley? Really?" she says, incredulous. "Great. That's probably a false name, then. Do you recognize any of the other names?"

The halfling snorts. "Half my business signs in under false names; long as their coin's real, it's no skin off my nose. This 'Gisbourne Surtova,' for example: bet his real name's Cletus Jones or Joe MacGillicuddy. Dressed in fancy clothes he probably stole off a corpse somewhere; claimed he was Brevic nobility who'd been set upon by bandits and if someone would just be kind enough to lend him a few gold to help his journey home, he'd send them back twice as much when he was back in his hoity-toity mansion. I told him he could take that story right to Freedom Town; ain't no one in Trunau going to fall for that nonsense."

"This Hammerhold, he's a dwarf. Seen him a time or two. Travels through regular-like on business. The Yaw ... Yonakoo," she stumbles over the pronunciation, "he was Varisian. Didn't trust his looks at all. Told the staff to keep a close eye on the valuables while he was around. The woman," she pauses and then shakes her head, "I don't remember. Only stayed a night with a group of other people. Must have been a caravan of some sort."

"Come to think of it," she pushes some loose hair back from her face, "there's been a rash of half-orc prospectors checking in under false names here lately. I don't judge 'em: maybe escaped slaves or looking to avoid some other unpleasantness. They've all been model guests, though; leave the room neat as a pin."

Cham's office is, unsurprisingly, in the Small-sized wing of the Ramblehouse. "Mind your head," she calls over her shoulder casually, as Alicia has to crouch over to traverse the corridor. Once inside, she sits on the floor and manages to keep her head below the ceiling.

The proprietress digs out a few dog-eared old registers and begins poring through them. The process is slow, relying on scanning down each page looking for the appropriate room number and then noting the name signed next to it, but after some time and effort, the two women have compiled a short list of occupants of the room within the range of dates Alicia saw on the scrap of parchment: Emmeline Grangerford, Kazmisk Hammerholder, Ionacu Taragoz, Gisbourne Surtova, and I. P. Freley.

"Aye, true enough. Who else has used this room in the past few months?"

"So," Cham sniffs, "where's all your concern about poor misguided Mr. Freley all of a sudden?" The halfling can't resist getting in on the ground floor of a good bit of gossip, however, and whatever Alicia is onto has the looks of a story to be chewed over for months. "Come along to my office," she relents, "and we'll have a look at the old registers."

Cham personally escorts Alicia down the hall to the room the half-orc occupied, summoning one of her staff to take her place at the front desk; clearly, she intends to keep an eye on the girl from the mission and make sure she confines her attention to the room in question and doesn't start wandering the halls.

"Here it is," the halfling announces, unlocking the door with a key from the ring at her belt. "Neat and tidy, just like I said. All paid up, too, not one of these sharp talkers who say they're just going out for a constitutional but have tossed their bags out the window to make a run for it." She cracks her knuckles darkly at the thought.

The room in question is on the first floor and contains only a single bedstead and a writing desk. The bed is a basic affair, with a tarnished metal headstead and a straw-stuffed mattress beneath clean but darned sheets and a slightly-moth-eaten wool blanket. The desk is a nicer piece of furniture that has nonetheless been chipped and worn by time. A cracked window high in the southern wall is the only exit other than the room's door. The bottom corners of the window house a historic collection of cobwebs, and the aged husk of a bluebottle fly lies on the windowsill; in contrast, the floor and desk are scrupulously clean.

Examining the desk, Alicia notices that the drawer has a false bottom. "Aye," Cham admits sourly, a little crestfallen that Alicia discovered it so easily, "that's a special amenity for my regular boarders. A little extra security." The secret compartment is empty, however; there's no indication whether Mr. Freley used it or even knew of its existence.

As Alicia is replacing the false bottom, she notices a torn scrap of paper caught between the side of the drawer and the slider. With a bit of care, she is able to work it loose without tearing it further. It appears to be the corner of a larger document, what looks like a map or a diagram. Certain points are plotted and then crossed out with a later hand; near each X is a date written in Orcish figures. All the dates appear to be within the last few months.

Cham frowns, unhappy that Alicia has disproved her words about the last occupant leaving nothing behind. "That could have been stuck back there for months," she points out defensively. "Nothing to say it's his."

"Did he say where he was going? It was actually a counseling session, and the preachers were a bit worried that he skipped out on it. Or could I look at his room? It may be important. I'd hate to see that he left a suicide note and we didn't know about it until it was too late to try to stop him."

"Oh, is that the tack they're taking now?" Cham replies knowingly. "'If only Kerst Grath had been more pious, or more obedient, he'd be alive today?'"

"Mr. Freley comes out last night, and I tell him, 'Oh, Mr. Freley, there was a girl from the mission here looking for you.'"

"'The mission?' says he, looking surprised, and none too pleased, I might add."

"'Aye,' I says, 'was it a secret?'"

"'No secret,' he says, disgusted-like. 'Just that I'm a prospector, and they're looking to invest in my operation: they bankroll my supplies up-front and lay claim to part of whatever I find in return. But I'm no friend of Lastwall,' he goes on. 'I reckon Trunau ought to stay free and independent, not under the thumb of some Watcher-Lord barely out of short pants. I'm skipping town,' he goes on, 'and I don't mind telling you. I reckon if I turn them down outright, the paladins will make trouble for me.'"

"Gods bless you, my lad,' I tells him, 'all save the Lady of Sticking Her Thumb in Other People's Pie, that is. Hope you strike a vein of ore so rich it makes your great-grandaddy's teeth ache,'" Cham concludes with satisfaction. "Aye, you can see his room, if you like. Left it spic and span, like a proper gentleman, even if he is a prospector."

Stymied, the rogue decides to try her luck finagling information out of Cham. She circles around to the front of the Ramblehouse and steps inside, looking around the common room to see whether "Mr Freley" is present. Assuming he is not, Alicia approaches Cham and offers her an almost-sheepish smile. "Sorry to bother you again," she says. "But Mr Freley seems to have forgotten his appointment. Is he still in his room?"

"Checked out late last night after the ceremony," Cham informs her with an air of triumph. "Sounds like another would-be convert escaped the preachers. Putting on a bit of a hard sell, are they?"