Prelude: Wool and Steel

[Grimbold]

Traek rests and has a cold dinner. When the owls start hooting, he wraps himself up in his bedroll, says goodnight to his mule and goes to sleep. In the morning, he wakes up again. He feels much better now - most of the small wounds the Glutan bit, have healed.

The merchant continues on north, carefully eyeing the forest to his left. After a few miles, the forest ends and more open wilderness begins again. In the afternoon, he sees a herd of elk grazing in a patch of prairie about 500 feet from him.

[Grimbold]

Display

I will fast forward you a bit... I see travelling is taking too long!

Traek ignores the elk and continues on his way. Several days pass without incident and the Dunlending is in a good mood. He can see the Barrow-Downs on his left but stays on the road. He has heard too many evil stories about that place.
He walks on and one morning, he knows that he could get into the town of Bree in the afternoon. However he knows that the Rangers are a secretive bunch and there is a spot on a hill south of Bree where he did business last year, a secluded clearing where there is privacy. He could also head there directly.

[TetNak]

Traek wants nothing more than the comfort of a bed. He is very tempted to head into town, but, he reasons, if something happens with his shipment this whole trip is for nothing. He can rest afterward, he decides. The merchant immediately heads for the out of the way clearing, hoping to make the deal their and then spent the night in one of the beds of the Prancing Pony.

[Grimbold]

Traek turns a bit east and goes off the road. After a few hours he reaches the great eastern road and to the north, he can see the Pen Drebi, a great hill where the summit is the meeting point of the rangers. He knows he cannot reach the top before nightfall and so he makes camp for a fresh start in the early morning.

[TetNak]

Traek stops, he would like to push his way to the top, but decides against it. What is one more night on the dirt. He sets up camp, this time lighting a fire, happy to be close enough to Bree where there should not be any problems. He cooks himself the best meal he has on the trail yet. He will be able to buy more supplies tomorrow, though he will be eating from the Prancing Pony's kitchen instead of his own foodstuffs.

[Grimbold]

The night is uneventful.

Traek gets up and he feels good, as the hot sun is rising. Pen Drebi is a great hill, thickly overgrown with trees, pines, maples and others, and bushes, some of them thick with thorns and leaves. Insects buzz around and the air is quickly heating up. Birdcalls can be heard and the hill seems very much alive with plants and bees. Traek knows that on the north side of the hill, the Midgewater Marshes begin.

[TetNak]

Traek breaks camp and plods up the hill, pulling his mule carrying weapons and wool with him.

[Grimbold]

Traek plods up the hill through the undergrowth. He soon finds a small path or animal trail, which helps him work his way up. As the sun is again burnung down hot, he soon starts sweating. Insects swarm around him and in the distance, the call of the neeker-breekers can be heard - the wind is carrying it here from the northeast.
There are some thorny raspberry bushes and ivy, but it seems, someone has already passed here not too long ago. Suddenly a clearing opens up. Traek knows this is not yet the summit of Pen Drebi, but it is about half way up. In the middle of the clearing he can see an arrow sticking in the ground.

[TetNak]

Traek keeps moving at a slow and steady pace. He does notice the arrow, and kneels next to it, wondering why it is here. The Dunlending looks around to see if he can find anything, and if not, keeps climbing the hill but is wary for what might lurk about.

[Grimbold]

Traek is no tracker, but he finds the broken corpse of a wolf lying nearby. Hoping that he will not meet one of the beasts, he walks on. After half an hour he comes to a steep cliff. While it is easy to climb for an agile human, a mule will never get to the top. He remembers that last year, he tied the mule to a tree and climbed up to meet the rangers and do business.