[center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell] [h2][color=598527][i][b]Kathryn Pyke[/b][/i][/color][/h2][i][b][color=598527]Human, Fighter (Rune Knight), Level 05[/color][/b][/i] [color=598527][i][b]HP:[/b][/i][/color] 49 / 49 [color=598527][i][b]Armor Class:[/b][/i][/color] 19 [color=598527][i][b]Conditions:[/b][/i][/color] N/A [color=598527][i][b]Location:[/b][/i][/color] Avonshire [color=598527][i][b]Action:[/b][/i][/color] N/A [color=598527][i][b]Bonus Action:[/b][/i][/color] N/A [color=598527][i][b]Reaction:[/b][/i][/color] N/A [/cell][cell] [right][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/7884b36a-e3f0-48fb-9689-1a8fd4af7f5a.png[/img][/right] [/cell][/row][/table][center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center] The worst was finally over. Cavendish was defeated, and his goons scattered to the wind. His patron had backed off for the time being, and the party was finally allowed to breath. Though the battle was a disorganized mess at points the party came together and saved the day. The rest of the morning was a blur for Kathryn. She spent a lot of the morning getting herself cleaned up, and keeping the answers to those who asked her questions vague. She gave a wave to the silver smith Jacques Mallard as he moved on to take care of his family. She gave him a friendly smile and wave as he left. She found it funny how their relationship started at the tip of a crossbow bolt, where she became the tart that stole his ring, to now rather solid allies. He had given them tools to help fend off the monsters, and they had been able to finish the job. And finally given the town a little hope to get through the night. Robert still had a ways to go before things would improve for him. Kathryn wouldn't pry him on it. But she hoped the man would finally get the break he needed soon enough. Kathryn would find herself in the public house a lot over the coming days. Firstly, to check on Robert as he worked through his problems. But as a whole, he still seemed a bit closed off. Sheriff Gregory had also arrived with some reinforcements. Granted, Kathryn had hoped for more. But maybe that was all they had to spare. The region didn't seem like it needed a huge military presence to maintain peace, or conquer lands. That is when they were all gifted their rewards. Apart of Kathryn wanted to refuse it. She hated accepting gifts from people who needed help. Even if they were rewards for her work. Then she saw the set of chain mail and held it up in front of herself. There were more pieces to it, but the main coat was something that excited Kathryn in ways she didn't expect. At a quick glance, it was clean, well maintained, well made, and most of it, it looked like it would fit. And fit comfortably at that. The set she wore now was also older, but it had also likely passed through a dozen other owners before it got to her. It was battered, beaten, chipped and patched in countless areas, and far from fit comfortably on her person. Though it did protect her enough to prevent normally fatal blows from being as such. What made things even better, she didn't watch the previous owner get brutally killed in it before she had to wear it herself. She fell in love with the new armor instantly. "[color=598527]Thank you.[/color]" She would mutter to the Sheriff as she collected herself, and set the armor so the side to change into it once the meeting was over. [center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center] As things began returning to normal, or as normal as they could after such events take place, Kathryn attempted to make the most of her time in town. She would continue to work on her physical training to help keep herself at her peak potential. At one point tying ropes around a bunch of hay bales in the barn, working on dead lifting them, and adding more to lift via rope over the rafters. As she found the tasks easier than they were a couple months ago, she hoped that meant she was getting stronger. At one point she had laden the party's new wagon with as many heavy objects and any volunteers who wanted a ride and would begin to regularly pull that across town in an attempt to find a more physically demanding workout routine. Strength training aside, Kathryn would take time to enjoy herself too. Enjoying the various meat products, games, and avoiding questions about what had gone on inside the municipal building when people approached her on it. Though some games she would get banned from due to most being designed for people of smaller stature, and who had more average physical strength, Kathryn still had a fun time. At one point while going about she crossed a jewelry stand made of mostly things imported from up river! Working quickly to finish her current turkey leg she began to ogle over the shiny materials when she noticed a rather ornate pair of rings. A set of rings clearly meant to be worn by a pair of people. "Got someone special you're looking for?" The kind jeweler asked while Kathryn eyed the rings. "[color=598527]Yeah, I have this friend who has really helped me be more... Well she's... It's hard to explain.[/color]" Kathryn said sheepishly. Struggling to describe the friendship she had with Kosara. "[color=598527]She makes me feel more... Like I can be myself ya know?[/color]" The jeweler clearly seeing a chance for a good sale pressed on. "Oh is that right? How long have you been with this lucky lady?" Kathryn picked up the rings and looked them over. No way in hell these would be cheap. But!! She thought it would be a great way to really kick off the friendship she had going with Kosara. Kathryn didn't really have a lot of friends when she left home. Just Ser Lucas, and people she worked with. So she wanted more than anything to keep this friendship going strong. "[color=598527]About a week or so. But I have such a good feeling on her ya know?[/color]" Kathryn said giddy as a child. The jeweler clearly had thoughts on the matter according to their flabbergasted face. But as he likely wanted to keep the sale, nothing came out of his agape mouth. "[color=598527]How much for the rings?[/color]" Kathryn asked as if she were a giddy school girl preparing for a date. "Uh... Three gold... each." Kathryn was a bit startled at the cost, but the rings were rather fancy, pretty, and she was sure Kosara would love to enjoy this matching set with her. Fishing out six gold from her pouch, she handed it over to the jeweler hoping she wasn't getting ripped off. And hoped she would be able to make some of that money back soon enough... She would be given a box for the rings, and move on her marry day to explore more of the festival. [center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center] Kathryn enjoyed her breakfast beer with her new found friends when V had walked in. Kathryn stood up to meet her new bard friend and gave her papers a good once over as she talked about them. What really got Kathryn going, is she was familiar with the writings. "[color=598527]You said the goblins had this?[/color]" She asked, mild concern in her voice as she spoke and looked over the papers V had brought to the public house. Kathryn did role her eyes at the part giant comment. "[color=598527]My dude, that was a joke. I was honestly surprised anyone took that seriously when I said it.[/color]" Kathryn chuckled surprised that the joke was still being brought up. But as she read it... "[color=598527]Huh... I don't know about Giant speak. But the untranslated words are oddly close to an old tongue popular with the mountain clans of Arconaple. You can still find traces of it in their villages and keeps. My uncle had a ton of that sort of thing back home. It's... definitely familiar...[/color]" Kathryn eyed the paper closely, and debated about filling in a lot of potential pieces of her training. Though, now she was regretting not studying the old tongues more when she had the chance. She wouldn't sleep much that night. Attempting to write down whatever she could remember of her rune training and her speech lessons on the old tongue she could remember. Though if memory served she wouldn't need to vocalize commands once she had things down. By morning, she looked like she had slept maybe 2 hours, held a whole kettle filled with hot tea, and held a plank of wood with the crudest looking runes carved into them. Collecting anyone from the party she could, and any passerby who may wanna see what cool tricks she was about to pull off, she would attempt to show off just how great this form of alternate magic would be! Had it worked. As she began her trick, she spoke a string of vocal commands, and the crudely carved runes on the plank began to glow. Flickering as if they were a candle threatening to burn out before it could really kick off. Kathryn instantly began looking woozy, but the effects were immediately visible. First only a couple inches, then soon enough a whole foot. The half giant of a woman would grow to a height of nearly 9 feet by the time the rune burnt out, explosively cracked the board, and shrinking Kathryn close back to her normal height. Not before last nights dinner, beer, and breakfast came back up. Glowing as if it were still possessed by what was left of the rune's magic. "[color=598527]I'm gonna... I'm gonna go back to bed...[/color]" She would mutter before stumbling back into the barn, limping as if she had just suffered some sort of grave wound. The glow from the contents she left behind soon fading away as well. [center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center] When she woke, Kathryn decided she needed answers. Firstly, she needed to know why the runes didn't work. Was it her craftsmanship? Her skill with the runes? Their summoning? Maybe she wasn't properly trained with it yet? She would need to practice more to know for sure. One thing for sure was, that was a miserable experience, leaving her so unwell she felt like she was fighting off the worst hangover of her life. Annoyingly ontop of that, she was pretty sure she was taller than she was before trying out the runic magic. Like any sane person who just had their body violently reject a magical injection, the first thing Kathryn did when she was dressed and cleaned up was prepare to travel. Not to the vineyard yet. No, she wanted answers. Kathryn now dressed in the armor given to her by Gregory, and the hammer she got from Cavendish, she returned to the goblin attack site. Now it had been cleared of goblins, corpses, and much of anything else she left behind. She needed to know where the creatures had gotten such notes. And if they had more. Maybe whoever supplied them had known more about this? When Kathryn remembered they had found something akin to a deer trail leading away from the camp, and she was determined to find it again. But when she looked now, she couldn't find it again. "[color=598527]Fuck me life.[/color]" She uttered. So they may never get more information on the goblins, or who had sent them here. Apart of her was still convinced of that. That someone had wanted the party to face off against the goblins. And that Mr. L'rose just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even with Marita's reassurances, she couldn't help but wonder about them. Shame none of the goblins could tell them more on who hired them, and how the hell they got Runes from the old tongue of Arcanaple all the way out here in Avonshire. Ideal as far from Arcanaple one could get while still being attached to civilization. [center]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center] In the remaining days before leaving for the vineyard Kathryn would wrap up some smaller loose ends. Practice with the runes more, make herself sick at least once more, enjoy some more festivals, spend time with her new drinking buddies and giving them all a good farewell before preparing to leave herself. She would wish Marita a good fair well before heading out. Thank Sheriff Gregory again for the armor she now wore proudly, and let him know to reach out if ever he needed assistance again. Not looking for another chance to earn more coin, but to genuinely try and assist the good people here in such uncertain times. Kathryn would help load any party supplies that no individual had claimed into the wagon. Things including short bows, spare daggers and short swords, and some food stocks that they may have had left over. As well as any packs the party didn't want to carry. Kathryn did eventually end up with the whip the constable recently possessed in her pack. Not open or at the ready, but close enough that if she wanted too she could look it over some more. Still working on strength training, she would keep her pack well loaded up. Not that it was heavy enough to actually weigh her down. But she thought it was the idea that counted. Walking on foot besides the wagons, helping them navigate for the road as needed, and in one case helping them pull out of mud tracks. "[color=598527]Southmoor. Interesting name for a town.[/color]" she spoke up as the party and wagons passed the road sign. At that moment! She remembered the rings in her pouch! Making sure to return the wave to the fisher as they passed, Kathryn ran over to find Kosara. Her poor friend seemed to have been struggling a bit since... well... everything. But the constable's patron really seemed to push her over an edge of some kind. Kathryn hoped she could help, but she worried the most she could do would be to just let her friend know she would be there for her should she need or want the help. Kathryn found Kosara 'lazying' in a wagon, snapping head around in almost paranoid and nervous manner every now and then as if hearing or seeing things at the edge of her vision and her attempts to write in her journal turning in a lot more jagged lines than her usual writing style [sub](Thanks Riv for the description)[/sub]. "[color=598527]Hey Kosara.[/color]" Kathryn spoke calmly with the biggest smile she could muster. "[color=598527]I got something for ya, thought it would be really cool to get us something cool like this.[/color]" Kathryn said excitedly, trying to approach without spooking her friend. Then! handing her the box with the ring in it. A giddy smile across her face as she did so, and also reached into her pocket to pull out a matching box.