----Groups A & B-----
The rain didn’t let up, all through the night.  It was soft, and pleasant, but the unending drops soon soaked everything that wasn’t well protected down to the core.  Soft and pleasant turned to chilly and soggy.    The fires soon hissed and died out, but fortunately by the time they gave up a very dark dawn was on the horizon.  Neither the road, nor the river, offered much shelter from the rain, and as light finally filled the sky the children could see that it was fighting a losing battle against the clouds.  Thick and gray they stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions.     The question became to wait out the weather or push on regardless.  

-----------------------------Brisa---------------------------
For Brisa she wasn’t bothered, well she was, she hated it, but she would carry on. The only true difficultly presented was her morning studies.  She normally woke extra early and by the light of the fire she studied both her book of maps, worked on her translations of the strange language, and memorized her spells.  Then she would prepare breakfast for herself and Argurios, usually leftover meat from the night before reheated in the fire and if they were lucky a corn cake or two also left over from the previous night.  This morning she still had to study, a spell had to be learned, but the rest of her work went untended.  Breakfast would be cold and from their travel supplies, she absently munched on a piece of unknown dried fruit as she bent her mind to the task at hand.    

Raindrops spilling down her face, eyes, chin, she bent her mind to the task.  This journey had been stellar for one thing…concentration.  She could tune out everything else to focus on a single thing, in this case the arcane words and formulas that she was committing to memory.  Cantrips were simple things, but she was very young for a magician, young in mind and young in magic, and they still took much of her focus.  
Still in a tiny sliver of her mind she began to wonder if she couldn’t push herself, expand her mind, learn more magic.  With no teacher she had assumed it would be impossible, but would it really?  She would mull that over for the next several days, trying to decide if it was possible to teach herself magic.  

----Hairlissa (NPC)----
The being known as Hairlissa in a hollow created by an upended tree.  The shadows in the hollow kept her concealed from almost everyone, and those creatures that wandered too close soon wandered away for she was unlike anything the natural denizens of this land had ever encountered.  
Though her body, human at the moment, hairless and naked, remained here her mind was far away.  She was deep in meditation and communion with her god.  The chill and rain went unheeded.  As an ectothermic creature all it would do was serve to make her sluggish anyway, she didn’t get cold.  She got slow.  
She had tracked the dark priests from their homeland, knowing they were up to no good.  The dark god wasn’t well received in Chult, his cults were secretive and small, but here in Faerun he was unknown, and growing in power rapidly.  Too rapidly for her own god’s comfort.  

Hairlissa had been considered weak, an inferior among her own people, until it was learned she walked with the god’s favor.  Now this pureblood had become one of the most powerful of her species, a favored of her god.  And she had followed the priests on his command, to learn what she could and stop them.
But with the growth of Eshowdow’s power, with the flood of  new worshippers fueling him, even she would not be able to stand against him.  So she watched, and studied, and listened.  And she saw what Eshowdow and his priests hadn’t.  She saw children escape the shadow-enslavement or zealot-law of their own homes.  She saw children go unnoticed by priests and dark god alike.  She saw determination, a will to live, and more importantly she saw a spark of revenge burning in some of them that could be fanned into a flame .  Human children, or mostly human anyway, weak and soft yet there was something there.  Something unnoticed and unremarked on, so small and insignificant were they that they just slipped through the cracks.  
So she pondered what she had learned and how to use it as she poured out her mind to her serpentine god. 

[i]watch, study, learn[/i] came the reply

Should she help?

[i]Lurk, hide, observe. [/i]

It was clear, if the children could not survive they were not the answer.  But if they could, if they made it to the sea port, then and only then….

[i]speak, aid, poison [/i]

She opened her orange-gold eyes on that last word.  Poison.  She knew poison in all its glory.  Not a poison of the body.  A poison of the mind and heart.  Some were halfway there already.  Hate and revenge tinting their souls.  It was a good start.  Poison would strengthen them.  She would see to it.