Within Castle Kalaman
(Everyone)
Grand doors are opened by guards in Kalaman Colors.
Inside, you are greeted by a vast room set up with many tables arranged in semicircular arrangement pointed towards a high table. There, Marquess Miat, Marshal Vendri, and Ser Corpher. At the other tables sit delegations of the major guilds—you can see a banner in the middle of each table hanging from a stand displaying that guild’s crest. The city’s biggest and most powerful guilds have the five most prominent tables at the front of the semicircle: the Cartographers’ Guild, Dockhands’ Guild, Fishers’ Guild, Masons’ Guild, and Shipwrights’ Guild. At each table sits at least four people, mostly human and hill dwarven nobles, all of whom are bickering like children when you arrive.
At other, less prominent tables, Mery recognizes a delegation from the bard college. Decimus and Hunni recognize Wyhan looking supremely bored and dour, sitting alone at her table.
At a table on the very end on the left hand side, you see a very put-out Lord Bakaris uth Estide and a sour-looking Baronetess Raven uth Vogler. Lord Bakaris looks like petulant child who just got scolded and Raven is giving him the stink-eye.
There is a table in the second row, but in the center with no one sitting there. A banner hanging from its center displays a green shield flanked by a white moon and a black moon. The green shield is drawn superimposed upon a giant shell, a fist, and a flaming hammer. A blue book is drawn so that entire set seems to be rising from its pages, like legend lore.
The room quiets down and the Marquess greets you all from his table.
“Welcome, Heroes of High Hill, Saviors of Vogler!”
A little cough from the side is greeted with a hostile glare from Marshal Vendri.
“Please, have a seat,” the Marquess invites you to sit. He turns to Vendri. “Marshal, if you please?”
“Thank you, your Highness,” the Marshal says, standing up. “After a lot of discussion, we’ve all come to an unsteady consensus.” Her glare silences the rising grumbles throughout the room. “But first, we’d like to hear what you’ve got to say, too.”
“Yes,” the Marquess says. “Small villages and farms to the south and east of Kalaman have been burned in recent weeks. Vogler is the largest community to be attacked and the only one with many survivors. Experienced patrols of armored Kalaman soldiers have been found cut down, in some cases with mysterious clawlike gashes in their armor. Lord Bakaris and the characters have provided the clearest information on the enemy that Kalaman has received to date.”
“Lord Bakaris, here,” Marshal Vendri continues, almost spitting his title and even looking a little sick to say it, “Has provided us with some information, but the tales he spins are inconsistent at best, and honestly sound like the ravings of a loon. We we’re hoping you could elucidate the situation.”
Ser Corpher, the little gnomish chief justice of the Order of the Rose pipes up. “Yes! Yes! The ravings of a rabid loon!” About half the people there begin laughing as Bakaris looks angry, but the other half look put out that their friend is being made fun of. “Why, he spoke of ghastly, gassy lizard people and a mighty dragon burning the town.”
“Oh, yes, the ‘dragon’,” Marshal Vendri, says. “Thanks to the Heroes of High Hill, here, we happen to have that ‘dragon’ in our possession—it’s one of the things we’ll be discussing. My experience is considerable, but it involves battling raiders from Estwilde and ogres from the Taman Busuk. Everyone here has heard rumors of war in the eastern nation of Khur, but until now, they hadn’t considered that far-off nation’s struggles relevant. I’m eager to hear anything you know about the enemy. And before you ask, we’ll be calling on that friend of yours in due time,” she finishes with a nod at Ser Artanis.