Ironhead
07-31-09, 09:58 PM
The human shifted his weight uneasily. Although the diminutive boy was half his height, his piercing gaze made the barkeep more than a little uncomfortable.
“He left weeks ago. I don’t know where he went, and I didn’t care to ask him. A strange one, that Ironhead. He caused enough trouble in his short stay to make me not particularly care where he went either,” the proprietor of the unnamed inn said before promptly walking away to serve a paying customer.
The halfling boy was bombarding everyone in the small village with questions about his missing brother, but it was unanimous that he was just too late. “Ironhead,” as he apparently called himself now, or so the boy assumed, had passed through Scara Brae late last month on commission from the city militia to investigate grave robberies in the small farming community on the outskirts of the main city.
Plague and disease were still problems in villages that could not afford medicine or divine intervention from temples in the city proper. As a result, most of the off-shoot villages had their own cemeteries to support the steady death rates of the poor. As was customary, people were buried with whatever earthly possessions they could feasibly take with them into the next life. Corpse-thievery was a profitable industry in less fortunate areas, with few guards or roaming adventurers to protect the dead.
The halfling traveler had heard rumors earlier in the week that another halfling had been spotted in the area. Evander’s combing of the surrounding countryside brought little else to his ears save for unsettling stories of a tiny ghost that left a trail of chaos in his wake. It seemed the trail had run cold, but the nagging voice did not cease.
“He left weeks ago. I don’t know where he went, and I didn’t care to ask him. A strange one, that Ironhead. He caused enough trouble in his short stay to make me not particularly care where he went either,” the proprietor of the unnamed inn said before promptly walking away to serve a paying customer.
The halfling boy was bombarding everyone in the small village with questions about his missing brother, but it was unanimous that he was just too late. “Ironhead,” as he apparently called himself now, or so the boy assumed, had passed through Scara Brae late last month on commission from the city militia to investigate grave robberies in the small farming community on the outskirts of the main city.
Plague and disease were still problems in villages that could not afford medicine or divine intervention from temples in the city proper. As a result, most of the off-shoot villages had their own cemeteries to support the steady death rates of the poor. As was customary, people were buried with whatever earthly possessions they could feasibly take with them into the next life. Corpse-thievery was a profitable industry in less fortunate areas, with few guards or roaming adventurers to protect the dead.
The halfling traveler had heard rumors earlier in the week that another halfling had been spotted in the area. Evander’s combing of the surrounding countryside brought little else to his ears save for unsettling stories of a tiny ghost that left a trail of chaos in his wake. It seemed the trail had run cold, but the nagging voice did not cease.