The Maestro's party

settled into the rooms of the inn according to their varying status.....the Maestro himself and his Clerk into an upstairs apartment of some comfort, considering the forsaken wild country they found themselves in......our guide and myself took a smaller but clean and cheery enough room looking out over the courtyard, where the guardsmen and the drovers were to be housed about in the lofts over the barns and stables ......our horses and pack-mules were being cared for and fed.....the innkeeper had sent a boy to the Fort, with a message for the River Captain....asking for permission to continue our journey deeper into the Forest Lands.....the Clerk scowled and muttered as he considered the dwindling contents of the treasure chest, wondering what sort of payment was customary for a score of outlanders wanting to cross the border into the realm of the Nine Princes......

The River Captain sat in his tower, listening to his informers describe the strangers who desired to pass through his jurisdiction and enter into the High Realm......He sent the boy back to the innkeeper with the word that the Judges would be consulted in this matter....they would cast their spells and read the omens.....perhaps in a day or two some answer could be made to the Maestro's request to proceed onwards.....

Back at the inn, we listened to this advisement with the stoic resolve we had learned to cloak ourselves with when dealing with the peculiar laws and restrictions of this ancient tribal society, far from the ordered and sanctified shores ruled by the True Empire.....two years ago I had thought these lands towards the sunset to be nothing but a myth or sailor's tale....but the Maestro had shown us in his scrolls the descriptions of these lands.....and thus far the facts had been found to accord with what was written in the histories.....weeks on the leaping waves of great Ocean had brought us to the Three Kingdoms of legend.....and the Lords of Mystical Orders on these far shores had recognized in the Maestro a kindred Sage, and expedited our progress through the complexities of custom in the Kingdoms, so that we after some time and expense and dogged travel were now at last on the verge of entering the fabled Elder Domain.....at least so we hoped.....what would the Judges rule? How much gold would they need to cast a favorable portent?

In his tower, the River Captain and the Senior Judge carefully opened an ornate and heavy bound chest, and took out from it a certain flat piece of slate.....the Judge took a stylus of gold and scribed characters in Eldrich on the surface of the slate.......he described in detail the party requesting permission to proceed upriver......two-hundred leagues to the North, these notations appeared suddenly upon the other half of the piece of slate, which rested on a table in the sanctum of the Priestess Queen of Orm......this worthy dame read the words, and sent a girl to inform the Serene Prince......

Three Rivers Town

At Falls Junction the Maestro had hired a local man called Jentro to act as our guide and translator to the next settlement of any importance upstream and inland....a place called Three Rivers Town....we arrived around noon in this village, after four nights on the fairly well-kept road which followed the river, we ever climbing gently upwards from the coastal plains now well behind us.....of course Hangar the Hungry and his fellow men-at-arms swiftly located a likely looking inn where we might obtain some victuals of better grade than what we had been consuming on the trail.......this was our hope, at any rate.....the smiling innkeeper sat us all at a long table with benches, much like at a country inn back home.....his daughters and nieces quickly passed around bowls of ale to our company, while Jentro began the negotiations with our host.....after a few moments of conversation in the harsh-sounding local tongue, our guide spoke to us in plain language, telling us that we were being offered fried ham-steaks, bread-and-butter, and "spice-jar salad".....and more ale, or "a strong purple wine", should we prefer.....the Maestro inquired into the nature of "spice-jar salad", and Jentro explained that beans, beets, nuts, carrots, "hard root", and what all were placed in a large clay jar with vinegar and spices and flavorings from the local forest and allowed to steep until a certain perfection of flavor was obtained.....he spoke highly of this concoction.....we saw that other patrons were swallowing all this with good relish, so the Maestro agreed to this menu, after Jentro had established the tariff in the jagged little silver bits which were the coin in this part of the wilderness.....