[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: OOC:

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That's a lot of animals!

You can get away without the rope; you know driving sheep is easier without it, as they're less likely to hurt themselves or become confused by their instincts to follow one and being tethered to another. But we can probably write of that 50 silver and the remaining change in baskets for the chickens, the means to secure all those baskets to Cleménce, and assorted herbs and spices. Perhaps even 11.

This is a remarkable sale for the people of the little village of Leveau; and the whole process gets everyone buzzing and marvelling. You end up with just about all you need, and by the end of the sale, the warhorse is an almost farsical walking bundle of netting filled with sacks and baskets and parcels, emitting a subdued but regular clucking. With the eight sheep you once again find yourself at the head of a small herd; and the villagers throw in for good measure a spry old billy goat that the sheep will follow, when he is tethered to the horse. Fanette and a trio of other girls of about the same age get about watering the beasts for you, working in a little crew to crank water up from a little well next to the town's only shrine - to Ishea and Karnos you recognize by their wooden likenesses carved into the doorframe, who north of the mountains you are given to understand are called Rhya, and Taal.

While the animals are prepared, the buzzing wifery of Leveau plies you and Bella with a somewhat tasty but thin soup that seems to be mostly onion and cabbage with the ethereal suggestion of protein cast about in the pot like a rumour. An old man sharpens the knives in the bundle of tools you buy before carefully rolling them in sack cloth; Naemi arranges for your extrodinary egg requirement as a combination of those available in the town. Some are duck, some are chicken, but all seem fresh.

And finally, after this rest, Fanette reluctantly surrenders Milo back into your care. The kitten bops combatively at one of the chickens during the handoff, but he's way out of reach, and no harm is done.

"They certainly are friendly; though we did wander in to town with a purse full of gold and a desire to spend it all. Still, they seem sweet enough," Bella decides. Neither are they so different to look at, as you might have guessed. While the lands are divided by strife now, the mountains alone have not been historically enough to prevent intermarriage between north and south; and a decent minority of the peasants here are as swarthy of skin as any Tilean.

When the time comes to go, Naemi and Fanette have additional tokens for you.

"Ici! Tiens, tu dois prendre, s'il te plaît."


For Bella, Naemi has a square of pale blue cloth that has been pressed with lavender; and a short game of charades teaches Bella how to draw it over her hair and tie it off beneath her chin, in the modest fashion of the ladies of the town for whom the full wimple is a cumbersome expense. The scent may help some peasants, too; though Bella herself is decidedly too well invested in her own hygiene for that have been a pre-existing problem. She doesn't seem to mind it, and is touched by the gesture.

You, with your helm, coif, and skullcap, have a scalp that is mostly spoken for; but Fanette reaches for your hand and, when plied with it, produces a slim, lapis blue ribbon that she ties around your wrist in a bow. It is the most colorful thing you have seen in the town; almost certainly, the most colorful thing her household possesses.

Then it's back you go, plodding with the beasts at a comfortable pace back to where you hope you will not find a massacre.

It's about halfway back when you smell it, on the wind as it shifts. Two things. The first, you're quite sure, is goblin sweat. You remember it from your desperate brawl with the little monsters with Gaulfredo, when you fought for your life and got a pick through the bicep for your trouble. The second scent you don't know directly, but close enough: dirty, unwashed... not quite canine.

Have you see large dog?

"What is it?" Bella says, picking up on your tension at once. "What's wrong?"

What's wrong is that there is a party of goblins behind you, with dogs - or, given the stories you've heard, probably giant wolves. Given that you can't hear them, they must be at distance, and tracking you by smell; and the change in the wind so you're smelling them will make that hard for them until it changes back. You're not far from where Briant at the nascent armistice of man and ogre should be - maybe twenty minutes out. You might make it.

Maybe.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Exciting decision time. Congrats on passing that smell roll.

If you want to hustle your animals back to Briant, give me your choice of Animal Care or Trade: Farmer, at +10 for passing that smell roll earlier. Bare success means you get back to where you hope the others are at the same time the goblins close in. Beating it by more, or failing it, will adjust the breathing room on that outcome.

If you want to stand and deliver, you can send Bella off with the animals and try to hide in ambush (which would be Hide, at +10). Same expectation as above; better success means better hiding spot.

Or you can do just about anything else you want to do, because this is an RPG woo hoo! But those are the most obvious options.