That's So Raven

You walked into Leilon tired and the town did not welcome you.

The palisade gate let you through. The streets were thin and watchful. Locals tracked you with their eyes. The central tower of Leilon — long the seat of whatever passed for governance here — was now the residence of the Knights of Vindictus, and a large beam from its frame had been laid across the upper rafters, with several fresh nooses tied off it.

You went to the Dusty Gnome for a drink.

Joss Skalen was tending bar. Same Joss who passed through the Toke Inn a few weeks ago. He looked up from the tap when you came in. Then his face fell.

Sgt. Azros was standing in the middle of the common room, still bandaged from Lodestone, one arm in a sling, the other holding a rope. The rope was around the neck of a wood elf — tan, tattooed, blood drying on his face, hair wild. At Azros's feet, a woman lay with her throat slit.

Her name was Gorna. She'd been dancing. The wood elf had walked in, cut her throat, and called up a wolf made of shadows. Azros had knocked him out before the wolf could finish forming.

Gorna was the wife of one of the Steel Beast's men. The Steel Beast crew had recently scuffled with wood elves out in the Kryptgarden Forest. A wife for a wife, the elf told Ubys later, in Sylvan. He called himself no one. He said his brethren would finish this town. He spoke of Vlokgar.

The dwarves wanted to hang him on the spot. Ubys talked Azros into giving the elf one night — a chance to be heard before the dawn rope.

You called him Runs with Bitches. You also called him Spitty McSpitterson.

In the tower, by candlelight, Ubys sat across from him.

He told you about The Blight. There were two kinds. One was rot, soul-eating, necromantic — the kind beneath the Toke Inn. The other was a wrong kind of growth — too much, too fast, the green that strangles. They had names for both. They were sworn against both.

He also told you he didn't expect to leave the tower alive.

You left him there with Azros and went to find a bed. He'd hang at first light.

Next session: dawn.