We've decided after all to take the Sword Lords up on their invitation and travel to Restov. It will take us 5 days, so we pack 6 days of food, gather lists from both Svetlana as well as Oleg, sharpen weapons (wits in my case) and saddle up.
The first few day's journey east is relatively easy. We meet travelers along the road and are warned that south of the Shrike river is centaur territory...so beware.
Our first night's stay is quite a push, as we are intending to lodge in safety at Fort Serenko. It is a small fort situated at the confluence of the Shrike and Kiravoy rivers, but is well apportioned and manned to guard the road to Restov. Run by Captain Alric and 20 regulars...although there are a few from the northern territories that are obvious "outsiders" with the majority of the men. It must be some kind of territorial dispute thing, I'm not certain.
The next few days see us in Nivatka's Crossing. A small town whose largest landmark is the bridge across the Shrike river. It is there that we run into a wee bit of trouble. As we entered the town there was a small mob of people gathered at one end of the bridge impeding the progress of what appeared to be a merchant's wagon being pulled by a centaur! Led by an elf, the small group was verbally accosting the choice of draft animals and threatening violence.
In turn the merchant, who was none other than Keal-garn Garas, self appointed sorcerer supreme, was threatening violence in return. And I was not certain that his type of violence would be much more destructive in scale, as he did not seem to me a moral person at all. In fact, I did not like him one iota. As proof of his malicious intent he had ensorcelled these nasty little creatures called spriggans as guardians. And like him, they were obviously intent on mischief.
The centaur had a spell of some potency cast upon him...According to Ix, and it was this that was allowing the wizard to guide this sentient creature and use him as a beast of burden. Despicable. None of our group were thrilled with the situation so we tried to adjudicate it.
In the end, we realized that power trumps nearly everything else...We gave two of our horses for the centaur Anakaris' freedom. Handing him over to the elf Malooki, we allowed Keal-garn Garas to pass w/out further trouble and stayed the night at the Inn for a reasonable 2sp / person.
The next day we spotted mammoth crossing the Shrike but beyond that the rest of our journey was w/out trouble.
