Pretty Thing
Magdalena attends to the girl - she is near catatonic. Mags takes her off to a stream to wash her. Amos skins the wolf and prepares what meat he can from it. Farfordda tends to the horses while Norgrim searches the bodies. He finds 8 emeralds which Amos identifies as fakes (with apparent value of 20 gc each!) and 3 bottles of Eilhart wine. They fail to set up a satisfactory camp and move on a mile back the way.
By 10pm they are sat by fire beneath an overhang, the valley is lost in fog and it is cold. Farfordda gives Magdalena his warm winter clothes. He manages to distract Ada (tho they don't discover her name till morning). While taking guard that night they can hear wolves converge on the goblin and bandit corpses they left a mile away.
On the cold misty morning of the 27th while finishing off the wolf Amos manages to get Ada talking as the others attend to each other's wounds. She knows nothing about von Holzbek, her parents were the 2 unfortunates she was with (Greta & Hals) - they were taking her somewhere special. The goblins said they were taking her to some orc chieftain who liked ‘pretty things’ to buy their aid against the vermin.
They have barely set off into the fog when Farfordda sees a figure walking obliviously past them. He sneaks after them and seeing it is a bedraggled elderly, or at least middle aged woman he steps out and accosts her.
Her name is Ingrid, she is a hermit and it soon becomes apparent that she has plenty of information that she’s happy to pass on, or sell. Farfordda offers to read her fortune and with a charm roll she assents.
They join the rest of the gang and make tea at last night's camp. They all give their names except Amos(Mungrim) and say they were hunting goblins to save this wee girl. She tells them much about the mountains, Red Tusk orc territory, Def Batz goblins - that the ratmen came to Zerlumptberg 3 summers ago, that they use human slaves to log in the valley below the mountain - she tells them that there will be tunnels which empty into the river from the old dwarf holds. She describes the 2 routes there and says she stays opposite Karak Kazarak, not far from the ford. If they look for her again carve some Taal markings into the trees close by.
She asks will she survive the winter, Farfordda with a low hand tells her yes, but be careful. She trades them 2 doses of Valerian for a bottle of Eilhart and finally (10am) the party get underway.
They head on down the valley - Ingrid told them Dunfurter belonged to the Holzbeks, so that's the destination. The fog lifts over the course of the day and they camp in the Taubertaal once more. A 99 for Adas condition has her being catatonic. By Midday of the 28th they can see Dunfurter castle at the head of the valley...
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