Common Worlds

After all that mess with the local queen–she was really nice but it took a long time–we got back on the road south. We followed the river 'cause that's where the crokamonster came from and Everina knew that trolls and other dark things were down south.

Pony was really happy to be on the road again. He likes our new spare gelding, they get along great. With good weather too the trip was nice until we saw lots of smoke coming from a village just a little out of our way.

Everina said we should go, which is good because I think Ulric was going to go anyway, and if Everina didn't want to that would have been pretty noisy. So in we go with me and Emarjan riding up the center. I think it was him. Pony and me were in the front so I'm not sure. I know everybody else went around the flanks and some of them got off their horses, which I can understand because who would want to ride anywhere near a fight on some little tiny horse that isn't Pony?

Pony got up to a gallop which is pretty impressive, you bet. We came around a corner and there were two smelly broos trying to kill some little kid. When they saw Pony coming at them flat out, they took off like scaredy rabbits.

Everyone ran or galloped around and we killed or scared off the broos. I made Emarjan follow the two we scared off. We chased them down on horseback and I made sure Emarjan killed them both. It must be true what the Shield Boss says, that lowlanders are weak and they don't know how to fight, 'cause we Shield Knockers made short work of the broos.

Then there was lots of "thank yous" and "you're so great" and "eat some of this" and "Holy Earth! Gran have you ever seen a man with so big a horse?" and that was all real nice. The grandmother of the village even offered to let me have a wife, but since we need to fix up Ulric, I couldn't just settle down in their village so Everina said no. They don't have sheep, so as nice as those widows were to spend an evening in, I bet they didn't know how to make mutton sausage anyway. And I don't really like the flatlands. Too close to Arkat's Hold.

But it turned out after the great party and helping them bury their dead that the old spirit woman for the town knew something about where we needed to go and we got some help heading to the swamp. Lots of spooky stuff and things I didn't understand, but Everina did, so then we got back on the road to another place near the swamp.