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We came home from Endelbar to a message waiting for us from Philip Madrigal. We met with him, and he requested that we go acquire some information for his faction of the Electors out in the middle of nowhere, Upper Thalia.

What bothered me more was him saying that people were taking notice of our deeds. I'm sure Grey didn't like that. But worse, Talpin knew who we were. Great.

Anyway, Philip's task was not something that could be banged out overnight. We'd have to travel up to Dimmersdel in Upper Thalia, acquire some information, check on the the status of one of their spies who hadn't been reporting in lately, and then perhaps move on to the capital to see where things stood with the takeover. Oh yeah, and check out this new connection they had found out about Talpin: he is related to Sanria Veris, a Duchess vying for control of Upper Thalia.

We headed back out to the fort on the Alestian frontier where we'd met Wil the time we saved those kidnapped girls. When we arrived, I picked up some horses of superior make and model that day, and then met up with Wil that night to have a chat, among other things.

The next morning I kicked Wil out of bed, who went back to his unit quite tardy, and the rest of us set out, heading up the “usual” paths to Dimmersdel. In a village outside of Dimmersdel, they told us they'd been grabbing people carrying weapons and pressing them into service lately, so to be careful. So, we put our weapons and armor out of sight and made like we were heading up to join the army to tend horses and such.

As we crossed into the gate of the city, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I turned to see some gargoyle statuary sitting on the inside of the walls of the city staring down at me. We hurried along to the Old Bavarian Inn and got rooms and decided what to do.

We headed from there to the Old Alestian Inn, where the missing spy was purported to work. Boyce talked up the chick running it and discovered that Ronn Gravath had left town to go stay with the inlaws. We got that address from her and headed back to the Old Bavarian Inn.

Where we found some youngish guy waiting for us. Turns out that he was with Dimmersdel Internal Security. He asked us if we noticed anything strange coming in the gate today. Trent made up some BS story about bumping into an invisible person, so we agreed to meet him at the gate tomorrow morning to discuss it with them.

That night we decided to go back and check out the Gargoyles. Trent determined they were some kind of earth elementals set to watch the people coming in and going out. The magic of them was intricately worked into the magic of the walls so we determined they were part of the defenses of the city, and not some kind of plant by a spying faction.

The next morning Trent and I hung out there up by the gate while Boyce and Grey hid nearby, watching. Some other dude came with the Internal Security guy… this new late 30-something guy was an obvious manifest and apparently more powerful than us. He was not even introduced.

They asked Trent questions about what he saw and where he saw it, and he made some BS up and then the manifest cast a spell. I guess he looked into the past because he said he didn't see Trent bumping into anyone. Then he asked me what I had been looking at and I told him I was admiring the architecture of the walls since I'd never been to a big city before.

Then they had us walk through the gates. I guess Trent was able to command the gargoyles to ignore him as he walked through. I just had to cross my fingers and hope that he could do the same for me. I walked up through the gate and back casually, and nothing happened.

Then Mr Important Manifest blew us off as not worth his time and they both left. Trent spent the rest of the day recruiting himself into the Upper Thalian army, while Boyce and I went to get the word on the street. I tried counting the number of military people I saw but there were really hardly any at all. Boyce talked to a few stall vendors to get a feel about whether or not there was a massive army building up nearby. Apparently not. I guess the troops were being shipped up to the war front instead, which was farther inside the Thalian countryside.

So with that, and after Boyce created sympathy to a closet in the Old Alestian Inn, we decided to go ahead and go up to Ronn's inlaws' place. Getting out of the city was something of a problem, though.

To the gate nearest our direction of travel we went. Trent tried to command the gargoyles but failed, causing the alarms to go off. We ran off and hid out for a little while then headed to a different but nearby gate. We decided to go thru one at a time, a few minutes apart, and just try to resist it with sheer force of will. I went through first, pulling the team of horses along with me. I was able to somehow resist the interest of the gargoyles as I passed through the gate. Trent came next, though, and failed. They flew to the ground and surrounded him. The guards were shaken about having to “arrest” him and approached them with crossbows aimed.

Grey must've run through invisibly, not sure about Boyce but he made it through too. It seemed that Trent was able to command the gargoyles and use them to help him get around the guards. We all mounted up and spurred our horses up the road as fast as we could.

But, it seemed we had pursuers. I was able to handle my horse well enough to get away but Grey and Boyce were struggling a little. Trent sent his tree back to impede the riders and it seemed she was somewhat successful.

Boyce and Grey were able to get it together enough for us to all escape our pursuers. We came upon the military camp forthwith outside of Dimmersdel, and decided to skirt the place by going through the forest. We were able to cover our tracks heading off the road and successfully go around it without raising suspicion.

We rode for the rest of the day at a much easier pace and arrived at Ronn's inlaw's house that evening. We were greeted at the door by Ronn's (hmmmm…. blond) son, Vrad, who seemed so overly eager to join the army that he opened the door to the house and immediately asked (excitedly) if we were from the army. Oh my. Anyway, after a bit of convincing that we were not, and that we were in fact here to see his dad, he let us in, all disappointed. Also present was Ronn's wife, his wife's two parents, and his daughter, Renme, who apparently has some fiancee in Dimmersdel that she is eggcited to get back to.

We spoke with Ronn and he updated us on the situation in Thalia and then after compiling all his notes and our notes, and deciding where we would head next, we sent our first message back to Philip Madrigal.

Early evening after speaking to Ronn, I watched Boyce spar with Ronn's son, Vrad, the one who was quite eager to join the army. He wasn't too bad at swordplay, actually.

Once Boyce was done sizing up Vrad's capabilities, I watched him head off to go “size up” Vrad's lithe, brunette sister, Renme. I, however, was interested in discovering why Vrad was so eager to join the army, and why he thought his father was so off-base with his adamant restriction on the kid not to, so I chatted him up about it as he mopped his face with a towel at the well.

His view was predictably immature, and it was obvious that his stance on the matter would not be changed no matter how much logic was injected into the situation, so I changed topics. After only a short time, it became pretty clear that Vrad didn't get much play around here, and so, since I was interested too, we both headed off in the barn to take care of it.

After that we all sat down and had dinner, and it was kind of awkward and weird, since we were specifically avoiding discussing with the family why we were here and how we knew Ronn in the first place. Oh well.

Later that night, after we all went to bed, I was surprised awake when Vrad snuck into the room I was staying in, waking me up in one the most… stimulating… manners imaginable. Well, so much for sleep that night, either. Not that I'm complaining. At least, not right now. Tomorrow, however, would be interesting.