Trade outpost where the Poor Man's Road meets the Swamp Road...


The day after they arrived was sunny and beautiful.  There was not even a cloud visible in the sky and as the sun rose above the land, the soggy ground seemed to dry up swiftly.  With a swift breeze still coming in from the East it wasn't even all that muggy.  It was quite hot, though, being well into the Summer season at this point.

Early on, as the sun threatened to rise, people were busy in the trade outpost fixing things up and dumping out any instances of standing water.  Large insects rose from some and buzzed angrily in the air.  Several people began arranging what seemed to incense in lanterns around the camp.  Soon after they were lit, when smoke began wafting out, the insects seemed to scatter.  Sometime later, the water troughs for horses were cleaned out and filled with fresh water from a covered well.

Despite them being on the Swamp Road and at a trade post specifically located near the swamp itself, the boggy wet lands were still miles away.  The grass around the trade post was regularly cut down to keep the more dangerous critters away.  There were a few thickets of trees in the mostly open field between there and the swamp proper.  It really didn't seem like much from this far away.

The group would rouse and begin their day.  At some point after breaking their fast, they would find the tavern with no name.  It wasn't that difficult as there were less than a dozen buildings in this outpost.  The building was two stories and seemed the typical sturdy-but-uninteresting sort of thing for the Lowlands.  There was nothing to advertise itself as a business and, with the boarded up windows, might even be seen as abandoned.  When they went inside, they would find a rather comfortable interior but with few people.

The people who were in there, however, looked very much like the veteran adventurers from the guild hall.  They had scars, they had weapons and they were all mostly quiet.  However, in a room full of people who, on their own, would be the town badasses, two people stood out.

At a table near the bar sat two figures.  One was a Lowlander male who was getting along in his years.  He was somewhat overweight and had his sandy blond hair tied back in a ponytail that would be fashionable on a younger, fitter man.  One leg was missing from just below the knee down and a peg sat near by, not currently being used.  Despite his gut and age, the muscles on his arms were firm, his hands steady and his eyes sharp.  He did seem thoroughly hobbled from his wounds, though, and had trouble even turning in his seat to see the new people walking in.

The other person who stood out sat next to the older, broken man.  He had dark purple scaly skin, yellow starburst pattern eyes and horns.  Well, he had stumps where horns used to be; they had been cut off.  His ears looked rounded at first, however at a closer inspection, one would see that they had been clipped down.  While one might expect to see a tail, there was not one present.  Cloven hooves stood in place of feet and the man had a distant, tormented expression as if he were stuck in a grizzly flashback.

A broken former adventurer and an equally broken tiefling.

All eyes in the room turned to face the group (except for the tiefling, who kept his eyes focused on a point far away).  It might feel like they had disturbed a sacred place with their very presence.