Storm in a Smithy
originally presented with lots more images!
Miro Goes Exploring
You head back up the hill from Oat Livery. After the bend in Purgatory Gulch's Main Street back toward the church, you looks around for a second.
Everyone else is scattering off to their chosen goals.
You decide that you will look behind the buildings.
It's easy to determine pretty quickly that a blacksmith would not be behind the Saloon and the fancy shop. There's that creepy-looking dead tree, for one thing. It would catch fire if a spark goes astray. That's not smart. A blacksmith lacking in smarts is a maimed blacksmith, and then a dead blacksmith. Ergo, it is not in range to blow a spark on that tree.
You look at the nearby pair of trees, by the schoolhouse.
These two trees are healthy.
(Well, they WOULD be, seeing as how there's a couple of graves there. Icky landlubber practice, that, putting bodies in the ground to see if they come back up as zombies or vampires or tomatoes. Feed the dead to the sharks, that's what Great-Aunt Gallus would say, that's tidy!)
But still. These trees are less likely to catch fire, being in good living shape with plenty of nutrients and such. But they would show soot stains if the blacksmithy smoke sometimes blew through the upper branches. You don't see any soot. You see some of the reddish clay stains from dust storms, which just goes to prove your theory. But no black soot. No white ash. Nope, not near the schoolhouse.
Maybe it's behind the General Store?
You head behind the two-story store with its wraparound balcony. That's nice. Get some air up there. Yeah. But not what you want this morning, anyhow. You can wait to see what Team Ranger reports back before you go poke in there.
Behind the General Store, you wander up a medium hill that reminds you of an ocean wave, and then down the other side. You decide to head a little further west again as you cross a flat stretch and then go up another hill. At the top of that hill, you can see that you are almost there: there's a bit of scrub, a fallen old tree of the not-suspicious variety, and a rectangular stone building with big windows at either end under the roof and smoke coming out of a chimney. Win!
Hey look: a Suslik! Probably.
by Jarissa Venters
So obviously you don't plan to stop here, right?
Right.
Oh! A tumbleweed blows through!
Still don't hear anything but the wind and the suslik and a couple of birds. Wrens, probably.
You still do not hear anybody. You can hear the forge fire, a little. And smell it. But shouldn't there be, I dunno, banging noises?
Whups, there goes the tumbleweed!
Well.
What do you do now?
It is a little odd that there aren’t any hammering noises, but then he might be having his second breakfast, mid morning tea and a biscuit, or possibly even taking a piss out behind the building...doesn’t mean I can’t peak in and see his wares hanging on the walls or whatnot. See how well he makes nails and horseshoes and possibly see if there are any long poles with three foot blades on them leaned against a wall or hanging up anywhere. You know? The Hell Bovine had to get their weapons from somewhere, didn’t they?
Good point!
A closer look:
There's a hitching post outside, and a couple inside.
Look at that frosted window! That thing is huge! And there's a little air gap up between the window's top and the roof, to let air in faster.
Well, nothing useful from that view. Might as well step inside.
Windows are both pretty clean. Someone must scrub them. Or use a cantrip, maybe? Because otherwise even a tall human is going to need a ladder to get up there, and you don't see a ladder. There's a permanent riser on one side of the forge ((that I could not find a free or super cheap representation for)) that will let you -- or someone your size -- have comfortable access to the heart and the forge itself.
Don't really see any weapons yet. Not things that are specifically weapons. There's a hammer, there's wrenches and pliers and such. Looks like they make shovels -- some of the scratches on the wall are shovel blade shaped, like shovels hung there to keep out of the way and got rattled in a breeze.
You don't see people, either.
Actually, something about this whole scene seems off. It's nagging at you. Something missing besides the blacksmith.
And didn't that square window have a different pattern a minute ago? That's kind of nifty!
Wanna start poking everything?
Helloo! I’m not here to steal anything! I’m here to acquire your services for a small job if you're not too busy, “Miro says” as he begins to poke around in the shop a bit further in. Looking at the floor for a hatch or doorway that could be hiding a lower room or something. Also looking for wardings and the like to keep nimble fingers (not Miro’s of course! He would never do anything like misplace someone else's things)from making off with his things when he was out for whatever reason.
Hiding places?
None you can find. And you're pretty good at finding that kind of thing! On account of ship hatches, and the like.
You do find that the square window IS magic, but not much magic. It's a kaleidoscope illusion. It just makes it pretty and interesting while it lets the sunlight through but not the heat.
That does not seem like something a blacksmith in a rural town would go for. Unless they were a gnome or something? Don't think this was a gnome's place. Tools aren't gnome style. Nah, not a gnome. Human maybe. Dwarf maybe. More than one person? Maybe? It'd be easier to know that if they had the decency to be here!
Okay, where could the person-or-persons have gone?
The fire does not need more fuel yet.
You have seen bigger forges. You've watched Adelred get chased out of bigger forges. You've hung out and hired people to make armor for that nice boy Marcos in bigger forges, and that town was pretty rural. No bellows really, for one thing. Looks like it was designed to let them turn a couple of valves to increase or decrease the air flow, instead.
But the fire is going okay. Hot in here. Set of the pincher things up there on the hearth, and a horseshoe.
Where's the horse they were going to shoe?
You turn your back to the forge and look at the workbench. Hammer there. Set down like they were just putting it down for a minute. Where's the
where
wh
WHERE IS THE ANVIL???
There's no anvil!
There's no sturdy base for the anvil to sit on!
There's no mark on the ground of where the anvil should be!
There's no big hammer thingy for hitting stuff on the anvil!
There's no thick reinforced gloves!
There's no raw material!!!
You look around again. Not moving around, just turning in place.
The only marks in the dirt are from your feet.
Someone swept up!
Where's the broom?
Maybe someone cleaned up WITH MAGIC?
Maaaaan, Sheriff Hemlock would be all over this scene!
So. Why did they leave the forge burning? Whoever they were. The bad guys.
Were they in a hurry to get away? Were they trying to escape before you got here? No, that's dumb. They took down a tall, strong person with a heavy metal thing already in their hand. They had time to clean up the evidence. They would have thought they could probably ambush you and whup you. They would have been wrong, but they don't know that.
So "escaping you" is definitely wrong.
"In a hurry to get away" is more likely to be wrong than right. BUT they might have been on a timer for some other reason?
What can you deduce from
- the forge still burning when you got here, but everything else --
- this is not an illusion, you checked!
- -- everything else is left like
- the blacksmith
- AND the anvil
- AND anything else they made
- that was not blacksmithing tools
- or a few horseshoes
- all just ... vanished?
Well this is a shotty way to run a business,” Miro says” loudly and disgustedly enough so that if someone were listening that they might be fooled by, “I guess I’ll take my business elsewhere I thought was a finer establishment”Miro’s boisterousness to let him slip away and go down the hill a bit so he can double back and make a wider 75 yards or so circle around the smithy. At some point the “culprits”( Miro thinking) will have thought the coast clear and would stop covering their tracks….Wagon or cart to carry an anvil...What the Hell do they need an anvil for?
Miro knows about clear coasts!
So. You came mostly south and some west to get here from the area of main street. You pretend to head back the way you came. You move slowly and carefully, using the scrub as best you can for cover. In the little flat bit between two hills to the west, you find the wagon wheel tracks you were looking for!
There are hoof marks here. Lots of 'em.
And the scrappy little bushes smell just a bit like smoked garlic.
The track is not continuous. You have to stop to scout around several times before you pick it up again. Especially when they went over a few hills instead of staying in the flat space, they almost threw you off. But you persisted!
The land starts to open up. The sun is getting high behind you. The air is hot and dry, but occasionally there is a breeze to blow the sweat off your face.
Spiro loves the heat, of course. He'd go flitting around, but he does not exactly blend into the wildlife here. It's getting increasingly less grassy and more cactus-y as you get closer to the huge rocks of Oatman Canyon.
After an hour of following tracks, you start to consider the problem of low cover. Except for where the ring of the canyon is, which you are probably going to pass south of, you can see the horizon to your west (in front of you) and definitely a sea of grass to the south.
You find a ten foot tall dead cactus, probably struck by lightning long ago and dried to a skeleton where it is. It's got woodpeckers nesting inside it. It also has a cow skull, horns still attached, attached to the top of it -- and the center of the skull is carved with a sort of curvy-edged yellow-brown triangle.
The wagon tracks and the hoof prints definitely go past this thing.
But in your experience, stuff like that is sometimes a warding glyph of some sort. Anybody comes through here without doing the right thing, or wearing the right thing, they might set off an alarm. Or get shot full of dead cactus quills. Or who knows?
You could walk past it anyhow.
You could try to dislodge or disable the triangle thingy.
You could send Spiro to try to mess with it. Maybe he can set the skull afire!
You could take the skull. Maybe. If you can reach it without knocking over the dead cactus or getting stuck or pissing off the woodpeckers, who are just doing birdy things.
You could memorize the symbol and head back to Purgatory Gulch.
You might have an even better plan than that!
I take out my book of maps and begin sketching the route I took plus the surrounding area and the skull with the symbol on it as I see it laying there. Spiro is having a good time sunning itself so I leave it alone for now. When I’m finished a go back the way I came and will try to find the others or a constable ( other than myself since I have no jurisdiction here) so I can tell them what I have found. On the way back if we see a suslik Spiro can enjoy a nice lunch since neither of us have eaten since breakfast.
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