Laurel's page

"Yes. Yes! And there isn't a moment to lose. People have already started to die, and it is going to get worse beofre it gets better. You should make arrangements to be on the road at first light."

“Well, for the elderwood moss, there’s gotta be an oldest tree in the vale. Damned if I know where it is, though.

“The mushrooms are even longer shots. Way north, toward the mountains, people say there used to live a bunch of dwarves. They’re not there anymore, but I’d bet their forges are. If you can find
ironbloom anywhere around here, that’d be your best bet."

"I have never been in the vale myself, so if you don't know where to look, maybe you could see Milon Rhoddam at the Consortium Lumber Camp. He knows the woods better that anyone else around these parts."

"She is an old witch who lives up in the vale. She had a nasty disposition, but was a master healer. My gran'ma says she exacted high prices for her help, but she did help. It is mostly from her teachings that I do all of this," she says, turning her hands over to indicate all of the shop, "though she took my gran'ma's sight in trade."

"You'll probably get the chance to meet her, if she is still around. I can't think of another soul that might no where to find the rat tail."

"Well most of this book," she says thumping the cover, "is the knowledge my grandmother traded her sight to Ulizmila for. That old witch has a way about her, dark and twisted but she knew her hoojoo. I'd be stakin' a lot more on trying to pass it off as the cure than you would."

" That's it, I am such a fool for not thinking of it sooner. You could get what I need!"

She seems rather excited, and starts digging through one of the books with gusto, "Here, my grandmother's book has a brew in it that says its good for this kind of thing. A weird concoction that ssounds more like hoojoo than real medecine."
"The recipe calls for some rare roots and concentrations, most of which I have here, but there's three I don't. Elderwood moss, which I've never heard of, but granny says the stuff only grows on the oldest tree in a foret. A specially pickled root called rat's tail, again, sounds like hoojoo to me. And seven ironbloom mushrooms, stunty luttle things that only grow in dark places thick with metal, a favorite among your people," she says while nodding towards Nerek, "or so I hear."

"Honestly," she says glancing at the dwarf as she speaks, "The only things I have here may ease the suffering of your friend. I don't have the means to make a cure for the taint."

"Hmm? Another holy man, well, er, dwarf," she begins, stepping out around the table to have a look at you.

"Well, perhaps you can do more good then those we have had around here. The taint is a sickness almost like any other, but you get the mold growing in you. It starts eating away in your chest and belly and is damned determined to stay. Your body near turns itself insideout trying to hack the stuff up, but all that does is cuts your guts up… bad.”

Then she looks at you over a wrinkled nose and pursed lips, "Why?"