Terror in Matten

When we arrived in Matten, it became clear that the 'price' Torsten had negotiated for our passage was to escort a cart full of crates to a warlord named Giorvana. This had me nervous because the warlords of these desert lands have long been a source of great violence and destruction in the land, but we were assured that the contents of the four crates which we loaded onto the cart were nothing but illegal liquor. Still not something I felt too comfortable being a part of, given the great evils of drink, but by this point the agreement had been made and I felt it best not to protest. Why, oh why could we not have just pooled our resources for an honest payment for passage?! Yet again our group seems to have gone ahead and taken the initiative, choosing expedience over goodness and truth. And why did we not look and check to make sure that vodka was all it was??!! Nobody seemed to want to question our errand, and to be honest, I think on some level I too was afraid of what we might find.
And yet again this rashness and heedlessness on our parts has led to the death of many! This time, not only a crew full of sailors but an entire city. At least, that seems to be what all the signs point to. Just after we made this delivery to Giorvana's men, he managed to completely destroy Trader's Haven. The coincidence is too startling for me not to think there's a very good chance that our delivery provided them with whatever terrible magic or equipment allowed for that amount of destruction. Oh Rose! We are terrible sinners. Everything we try to do in your service seems to go wrong, and lead to terrible death and destruction!
When we heard and saw the explosion behind us, after having already travelled for several hours away from Trader's Haven, all of us except for Dirge felt compelled to go back to Trader's Haven and see if there were any survivors to be helped and rescued. One man whom I was trying to treat was nearly on the brink of death was the one who informed us that Giorvana was behind the attack, but he died in my arms before he could tell me any more of how it happened. I could not speak or think any longer about the responsibility we bore. I somehow managed to just shut down that part of my brain, and instead spent the rest of the night working tirelessly as many as I could help bring back to health, using my basic medicine training once I had run out of magical energy for curing.
The next day we scrounged up everything useful from the charred and burnt city we could find and took this group of displaced people (about 80 in all-- though we lost ten along the way) to the nearest settlement, a small but very insulated and guarded community to try to convince them to take them in for the night. After some negotiating with a halfling and then a man named Andelman who were rather harsh at first, they eventually agreed to accept 40 of the refugees though they insisted on picking which ones got to stay and which ones got to go. Following Torsten's lead (And here his nobility began to shine through) though, we for our part insisted that no families be separated. The only conditions on which they would make allowances for someone Andelman chose, were if I agreed to stay in the community as a minstrel. All of this was very strange and unreasonable, especially given that Andelman and the other guard were at first reluctant to take any of the refugees in. He said something else strange when I first followed Andelman into the city, once someone enters the city walls, they don't leave. It has me a little wary about the kind of rules these refugees must live under, but they need the shelter and food. And as harsh as they were in responding to our request, they seemed sincere in their intentions to care for the people they took in, as far as I was able to tell. Well, I agreed to there terms and while Andelman's selection of the 40 did end up separating some spouses, the spouses seemed willing to undergo the separation, I suppose in order that those invited could still be guaranteed safety for the night. I did not have to stay, though I was ready to make an escape the following day if I had been.
We camp tonight outside the city walls with the other 30 or so travellers, whom the people of this community provided with some rations to stretch us through the trek to the monastery, where I believe the remaining 30 people will be taken in, through the goodness of the Abbot there.