Category: The Argent Quill

The Society Sheet of Silverymoon, Gem of the North

— A Single Copper, Where Sold —

NO TROLLS AT FERNLOW

A Hag, Not a Horde: Silverwood Scare Ends Without a Torch Lit

The village of Fernlow, on the west bank of the Rauvin, has spent three weeks certain that the trolls were back. Goats vanished in the night. Fence posts were clawed. A woodcutter, one Edric Dunmore, walked into the trees and did not walk out.

The Quill can report that there were no trolls. A party of travelers out of Silverymoon went into the deep wood and found a hag’s den in a hollow the woodcutters call the Sink. The hag is dead. Master Dunmore is home, thinner, and by his wife’s account not permitted out of her sight. The missing goats were found penned and bleating.

Reeve Hal Brannock, who had called a meeting to send men into the thicket with fire, has called it off. “We were a day from burning the wood,” the Reeve told a ferryman. “I’m glad we waited.” The Quill notes that the last time the river villages did not wait, it was Olostin’s Hold that paid for it.

CLEARED, AND STILL UNWELCOME

The Herbalist of Fernlow

Fernlow’s troubles had a second suspect. Three goats died in the walled garden of the village herbalist, Tamsin Brierly, and when the miller’s young son fell sick, the village did not look far for someone to blame.

The boy is well, and for how he came to be well we have only the word of his father. Tobin Marsh was the one witness, and he will tell it to anyone who stands still. By his account, one of the travelers had only to glance at the boy’s fingers to name the poison and the bog it grew in. A second laid a hand on the child, and the mill lit up from floor to rafters like noon at midsummer. The boy sat up, asked for his supper, and ate an entire loaf and a bowl of stew that one of the travelers warmed for him from their own pack. The Quill makes some allowance for a grateful father, but is assured the loaf and the stew are true.

What is certain is that it was no plant from the Brierly garden. It was a bog fungus from the Evermoors, carried in by the hag.

One might expect an apology. Fernlow offered a condition: the herbalist was innocent, and the garden must go all the same. “We were wrong about the well and right about the goats,” said the widow Dagny Holt, who keeps bees and does not waste words. Miss Brierly has declined to pull up a single root. She left Fernlow with the travelers and is understood to be in Silverymoon.

THE ARGENT QUILL

WHISPERS FROM THE RAUVIN ROAD

— Who were the travelers? Master Marsh, so free with the miracle, is less sure of their names than of their virtues. They may have their flour ground free for as long as his wheel turns.

— A young woman with green-stained fingers was seen crossing the Moonbridge behind a handcart of covered seedlings. She did not stop to chat. The Quill wonders which household in this city has room for wolfsbane.

— A ragpicker’s cart stands unclaimed at the Fernlow ford. No one will touch it, and the village dogs will not go near it.

OUR READERS REPLY

The Quill asked which tent of the vanished Bazaar its readers most wished they had seen, and which of the Spit & Spark’s skewers they would have dared.

The tents. The Bottled Choir leads comfortably; half the city, it seems, would pay for a vial of someone else’s laughter. The Misplaced Hour comes second, chiefly among correspondents who are late with something. A lady of the Northbank asks only for the Hollow Chime and its bell that rings at lies, “for use at my own table.” The Glass Garden has a single vote, unsigned, in a careful hand.

The skewers. Roast boar is the people’s choice, which the Quill considers a failure of nerve. Seven readers claim they would have eaten the displacer beast loin; we believe two of them. Nobody admits to the giant rat, though at a copper apiece somebody bought them. On the phoenix-ash glaze, opinion divides between those who say it cannot be real and those who say it was worth eight gold. A cook of long service in this city writes that she would have tried none of it, and that “mystery” is not an ingredient.

NOTICES

HAWK’S NEST still seeks able-bodied folk for the winter watch on the Sundabar Road. Apply to Commander Hespera before the snow closes the pass.

THE PROPRIETOR of the Bellweather Trading Post now offers a reward for the return of his scarf. No questions will be asked, though he has several.

TO OUR READERS

Has your neighbor a garden you would rather they didn’t? The Quill would hear of it.

The Society Sheet of Silverymoon, Gem of the North

— A Single Copper, Where Sold —

PASS ROAD OPEN AGAIN — FOR NOW

Gnoll warband broken above Hawk’s Nest. Sundabar wagons roll before the snows.

The road through Silverymoon Pass is open again after nearly two weeks of raids. The raids had stopped work on the road and left at least one caravan wrecked on the road beyond Hawk’s Nest.

Garrison sources say a small company of hired travelers, backed by Sergeant Durgan Coldhelm of the Hawk’s Nest wall, climbed to the gnolls’ den in the first snow of the season and broke the warband. The largest of the beasts was killed. Survivors scattered into the high hills.

Commander Hespera Tallis would say only that the fort’s orders are unchanged. “My people hold the wall. The road is open because someone went up that mountain. I’ll leave it there.”

Foreman Dain Coldhelm, the only known survivor of the attack on the road, is recovering at Hawk’s Nest. His crew will be remembered at the fort this week.

Merchants in the Market District welcomed the news, though most expect the pass to close for winter within the month. The council’s shared plans with Sundabar for the road remain set for spring.

THE TRAPPER WHO WAS RIGHT

For a week, Hobb Werrick told anyone at Hawk’s Nest who would listen about a gnoll “twice the size of the rest.” For a week, nobody listened. This is, after all, the same Hobb who swore a frost giant stole his mule.

It seems Hobb has had the last laugh. “I said it was big,” he told this paper, at length and over several cups. “I said it was ugly. Nobody writes that down. Write that down.”

We have written it down.

WHISPERS FROM THE WALLS

Our society correspondent reports:

• Sergeant Coldhelm is said to have opened a cask of dwarven stout he’d saved “for a proper occasion,” and to have made the entire mess hall stand for the toast. Nobody refused a second cup. Nobody dared.
• A certain Thalvorn Trade Consortium factor was seen asking after news of the pass in three separate taverns this week. The Quill notes only that the Consortium has always taken a keen interest in the Sundabar road.

NOTICES

• Hawk’s Nest seeks able-bodied volunteers for winter wall duty. Warm beds, hot meals, poor pay. Apply to the fort.
• Found on the pass road: a child’s carved wooden horse, from the wrecked wagons. Claim at Hawk’s Nest.
• Still missing: one mule, grey, answers to nothing. It is not in a Sundabar stable this time. — H. Werrick

TO OUR READERS

The road is open until the snow says otherwise. If you’ve traveled the pass this season, the Quill would like to hear what you saw, and whether it was bigger than it should have been.

The Society Sheet of Silverymoon, Gem of the North

— A Single Copper, Where Sold —

OPEN PASS ACCORD SIGNED AT DAWN

Three Cities Commit to Year-Round Silverymoon Pass; Fallgate’s Long Monopoly Faces First Real Challenge in Forty Years

Representatives of Silverymoon, Sundabar, and Everlund gathered before dawn yesterday at Concordance Hall to formally sign the Open Pass Accord, committing all three cities to equal annual funding for year-round maintenance of the Silverymoon Pass. Snow clearance, waystation upkeep, and seasonal patrols will now continue through the winter months, when the high road has traditionally closed and left the river crossing at Fallgate as the only practical route between Everlund and Sundabar.

The Fallgate crossing has operated under a toll charter held by the Thalvorn Trade Consortium for some forty years. With the Pass now open in all seasons, merchants will for the first time have a genuine alternative to that crossing — a change several delegates privately called long overdue.

“Everlund has watched goods and grain both held hostage to a single toll gate for as long as I’ve held office,” said Ambassador Wenna Sallow, speaking for Everlund’s delegation. “This accord doesn’t close Fallgate. It simply means Fallgate no longer gets to be the only door.”

The signing proceeded without incident, capping months of contentious negotiation. Thalvorn representatives did not attend the ceremony and declined to comment.

FIRE CONSUMES VACANT FAIR MEASURE STOREFRONT

The old Fair Measure Trading Company storefront was lost to fire late Wednesday night, City Watch officials confirmed. The building has stood vacant since the shop’s closure and is believed to have gone up from an untended lamp or stove ember. No injuries were reported, and the structure is considered a total loss. The Planning Committee is expected to review the site for redevelopment once the ashes have cooled.

WHISPERS FROM THE RECEPTION

This columnist’s usual promise applies: everything below is true, or ought to be.

Ambassador Dallet of Sundabar was seen checking his pocket watch no fewer than eleven times during the pre-ceremony remarks — this columnist counted. One does hope Sundabar’s famous punctuality made it into the treaty language somewhere.

Everlund’s Ambassador Wenna Sallow, never one to let a room go unworked, spent the evening extolling the virtues of the new road to anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. By this columnist’s estimate, roughly half the guest list now knows more about waystation logistics than they ever wished to.

Merchant Pryce spent a suspicious amount of time in close conversation with anyone wearing a Sundabar or Everlund seal, all of it — he swears — purely social. This columnist notes he left with rather a lot of new correspondence for a man merely being sociable.

Long-time Concordance Hall guard — and something of an unofficial second pair of hands for the Trade Envoy’s office when needed — Perrin has never quite hidden his old torch for Denna Colter, though most assumed that particular flame had burned out ages ago. Miss Colter, it seems, agrees: she spent a considerable stretch of the evening in the garden in company this columnist did not recognize, leaving Perrin to nurse his punch alone by the east wall for the better part of an hour.

Magistrate Rathmoor, for his part, spent an unusual amount of the evening deep in conversation with a striking, sharp-tongued guest this columnist cannot place on any invitation list — gone before introductions could be made. Silverymoon society will no doubt spend the next fortnight trying to determine who she was.

Sister Thessaly, high priestess of Waukeen’s chapel here in the city, was seen lighting candles at the reception’s shrine alcove alongside a visiting cleric this columnist couldn’t place to any order — a quiet, unbilled moment of interfaith goodwill on a night built entirely on trust.

The Argent Quill welcomes correction, correspondence, and gossip in equal measure. Send all three to the usual box outside the Vault of the Sages.