[b][h2]Duskwood[/h2][/b]

With the state of the Kingdom of Stormwind, with its king missing from the throne and a regency built around the young prince, the lands under the influence of the southern most human kingdom had grown perilous to travel. There simply were too many threats to contend with and too few armed solders to patrol the main roads as they might have once done. 

This of course didn't stop merchant wagons and traders trying their luck. The wealthier or well connected merchants tended to pool their resources together in order to form caravans, the guards they employed working together in order to try and stand against whatever foe struck out to disrupt their cargo; In the past such caravans would have passed by without incident at all, but these days the threats had grown in number and boldness to the point that no cargo passed through provinces like Westfall or Duskwood without coming under heavy attack. Smaller merchants tended to only have a single wagon at best and despite the rewards that the chaos of the day were offering, few lived to profit from them. 

Which made the cart from Westfall all the more interesting. Because in an era were the bandits and monsters were willing to attack fully defended caravans, this one had traveled through Westfall without incident. 

From an outside, less informed perspective this might have seemed utterly miraculous. The reality was much less so. 

This 'merchant' was a smuggler. Namely, he was a smuggler who had good relations with the Brotherhood and was, in fact, currently transporting a shipment for one of the cells in Duskwood. This went a long way in ensuring that no one bothered them while traveling through Westfall, through once the cart crossed the bridge into Duskwood it stopped briefly in order to pick up its escort for the rest of the journey; Duskwood wasn't the bastion of the Brotherhood that Westfall was after all and the monsters weren't under their thumb. 

In the end the cart rolled up to a farmstead that had seen better days and the cargo was unloaded. The leader of the cell came out, the two shared some words and a sack of coin was handed over, alongside a gift of a bottle of rather good dwarven ale. What [i]should[/i] have happened was for the Smuggler to return to Westfall so that he could continue to ply his trade with those who offered coin to him... however, instead he died in the seat of his cart, his horse freaked out at the sudden, painful movements of its driver. 

When the body was found among the wreckage of the cart on the side of the road, the horse was long gone and the native wild animals had already taken some bites out of corpse. Enough of it survived however to show that the man seemed to have died from the venom of one of the local giant spider breeds, suggesting he had simply run afoul of one. Unfortunate but... a common danger for those traveling Duskwood.

Bautic for his part actually felt a little bad for poisoning the smuggler. He had been an alright guy and had served the Brotherhood's interests well in the past and possibly the future. But the cold hard truth was he had to die. He was the one link in the chain that couldn't be trusted; The only one who might reveal if captured that he had been delivering a special shipment of grain from smugglers from the north.