Merric - Judith has no idea that you are snooping around the kitchen. You can easily stock up on some cheese and hard sausages. 

Dathyra - Will tells you that there are tracks all over the place at the farm. "My daughter, Elsie, discovered the...the slaughtered cows this morning." 

Sen- Joseph smiles back at you. "Well, the Orc have been roaming up in the Northwoods for several years now. Really they kind of keep to themselves. We don't mess with them and they don't mess with us."  Patrick butts in again, "Till now, them Orcs is deciding to break the peace. They'll be invading all of the Northern Reach!"  Stella continues to fan herself, obviously feeling faint at the thought of Orcs. Joseph gives Patrick a sharp look. "Well, they are!" Patrick defends himself.

Joseph turns to all of you. 'I was hoping that you could do some poking around, like an investigation. I told all the people here that we shouldn't be quick to judge, but you know some of them has lost nearly everything and who knows where it will stop."

Durven, upon hearing all the accusations leveled at the Orcs, sets his jaw and goes behind the bar and pours a drink, remembering why he left. Afterwards he unloads the casks out the wagon. 

Can Sen grab Patrick by the shirt and lead him backward up against a wall? I'm not going to hit him, but I want him to know that I'm tired of hearing him run his mouth. 

[Gotcha.  Roll an intimidation and athletics check] 

Athletics: 8 

Intimidation: 9 

Sen grabs Patrick and yanks him to his feet and begins to shove him up against a wall but the whole thing comes to  a standstill after a few feet. Everyone in the Highland Inn comes to a standstill as well. Sen pulls Patrick down to his level and tells him "I've had enough of you running your mouth!"  Patrick looks more confused than afraid, maybe a little hurt than insulted. He puts his hands up to let you know he's done. He looks at Joe with a "What the hell?" expression. 

Joe tells Patrick, "I told you we needed to the truth about what was going on. You agreed to that, remember?" Patrick nods and heads straight for the bar till Durven shows up and stares him down till he leaves. Apparently they have a history. 

Joe tells Sen, "Patrick ain't normally like that. He and his family are going to be going hungry this winter, they were wiped out. He's embarrassed that he couldn't protect what's his. He just wants something to blame. He put up a good bit of the gold that brought you here. 'That's near the last of it. you can't eat gold in winter.' he told me.  In the background Durven shakes his head, "I don' know. I think he's always been an ass."

Will MacGregor speaks up again, "I need to be getting back and checking up on Elsie. Are you all coming out 'to investigate' or are you storing up for winter? and he nods over to Merric. While Merric was quite stealthy in obtaining the cheese and sausage, he'd been nibbling on them quite nervously and openly during the confrontation with Patrick. 

Swallowing a last (well deserved) bite, Merric looks back a bit sheepishly at Will and says "Well...suren' we be comin' to be investigatin.  Can't be comin's hungry though if we wants to be giving things our fulls attention is all.  If we's all been done doing what we're doing I say we get a movin..."

Dathyra shook her head. Lathander, give me patience, she thought. For every rational and clever thing Sen did, it was quickly followed up with a rash decision that could have potentially had worse consequences. And Merric was just...well, Merric. Absolutely, she agreed with Sen's opinion. It seemed wrong to just assume it was the nearby orcs because of their race. She also knew that it would be bad enough trying to go in to fight an orc camp. It would be even worse if they did that and they turned out to be wrong. Still, Sen was about as intimidating to Patrick as a kitten was to a guard dog. Could have handled that better...

"Investigate? Yes, I would find that a welcome idea. I'd rather go into this with as much of the facts as possible."

Harivaldr had jumped when Sen made his move against Patrick, and was left muttering a few Dwarvish curses under his breath while he tried to reorganize his thoughts. He'd dealt with orcs before, and while orcish raids weren't a rare occurrence in his travels, the same could be said of any bandit clans and more than a few wolf packs or bears. No, they needed to look around themselves, ideally find some tracks or catch whatever was responsible in the act.

"Yes, I don't like our odds against an unknown foe. Should we split up or stick together? If we aren't going into the Northwood yet, we should be safe to investigate the surrounding farmland, and we'd be able to cover more ground."

Merric hastily puts cheese and sausage out of sight. Dathyra and Harivaldr find Patrick's prejudice repellent but feel fortunate to have avoided a confrontation. Sen doesn't know what everyone is so upset about and thinks that Patrick could use some confrontation upside his head. Phyllis is getting impatient with all of this. Durven is planning to run some ale out to Knob Knoster but should be back tomorrow. ((unless you wanted him to accompany you))

You all decide to delve further into these mysterious livestock attacks and head down the road to the MacGregor farm. It is a half mile down the road.

Farmer Will MacGregor, his wife Eleanor, and their six children till 60 acres, rotating beans, wheat and corn behind their two story farmhouse situated on the south side of the main road. On the north side is a 60×80 foot livestock barn and 20 acres of fenced pasture, behind which lies the Northwood.

Will meets you at his farmhouse. The entire family has come out to greet you. "Well, I'm glad you are gonna take care of all this. If there's anything you need let us know." He introduces his wife Elenore and his children,  Joslyn, Bethany, Mikel, Jalen, Elsie and Will Junior. They all dutifully say hello and head off to do their chores. All except Elsie, she is sitting a rocking chair on the porch fidgeting with her fingers.

Will sees you take notice, "Elsie, found em this morning in barn." Elsie shakes, "Blood everywhere, I just ran back home."

Merric immediately feels badly for Elsie, not liking to see anyone sad (especially a child) and not having a good time (the whole purpose of life to be having fun at all times being the halfling point of view!)

He immediately wanders over and says "Hi Elsie....I'm Merric!" and immediately tries to start a dazzling display of juggling with a ring of sausage, an apple, a block of cheese, and a rock. Hoping a little performance will brighten her mood or at least a great juggling trick might at least distract her a bit.

Sleight of Hand: 16

Performance: 14

"Don't you's be worryin' no more...us'n will be taken' care o' things."    Looking towards the others, he says "Unless somebody heard or be seein' something...probably fer de best we just be taking a looks around, no?"

"If you don't mind, I'm going to take a look around," Sen says to Will. Sen seems to be in a rush and not much for conversation at the moment. He assumes the others can gather more info from Will. Sen will then head off toward the barn and try to find tracks that were left by whatever was there. 

Elsie giggles in spite of herself. She's never seen anyone juggle cheese before. She's seen something traumatic to her. She's maybe in a mild state of shock.

Will and Elenore didn't hear or see anything unusual last night.

"It was just at the break of day, Elsie went to milk the cows and comes back screaming and crying. I went over there but I couldn't bring myself to enter. I shut the barn door and went to Joseph. Thank the gods you made it here."

Harivaldr smiled at the sight of Merric's antics. While it was terrible that she'd had to see... whatever it was that was in the barn, the fact that she was still able to laugh a little was a good sign that she'd recover. Will's explanation of the events did leave them in a bit of a pickle, assuming Elsie saw something that Sen wasn't about to. If neither of the adults had seen anything, and their only potential witness was Elsie, then they might have to ask what she saw. Harivaldr winced a little at the thought, it probably wouldn't be good for the little girl... He decided then and there that he would bring it up if and only if they were unable to glean anything from the barn.

An idea suddenly occurred to the dwarven skald. A little quieter, so as to hopefully let Merric's distracting presence keep Elsie from listening in, he asked, "Mister Will, if you don't mind my asking, you mentioned that you didn't see whatever was in the barn when you shut the door... but did you hear or smell something?"

Dathyra was a bit unsure what to do. She knew that with Elsie being the only person so far to have seen something concrete, her story would prove an asset in solving this situation. However, the girl had been through a lot, and whatever it was had definitely given her memories she would never forget. Dathyra had seen that look on her own sister's face. Perhaps it was on her own sometimes. But she knew that Eryn, who had been only a child of six when the raiders came, struggled to deal with all the frightening memories. When they first began to live at the temple, Eryn spent the first couple of years crawling into Dathyra's bed at night, in need of someone to be there to protect her from the memories that came to her every time she shut her eyes. Most nights, she would just lay her head on Dathyra's chest, listening to her heartbeat, using that as a focus for her meditations into trance. And during the day, Eryn was practically fastened to her hip, afraid to leave lest Dathyra or Vaquen be the next to leave her.

In short, she didn't know what to do to help the young girl. She knew what would have worked with Eryn in a heartbeat. Eryn was very physically affectionate, and she really only needed someone near her to feel safe. Dathyra was a complete stranger to this girl. She was pretty sure it wouldn't work the same way. She was glad when it was Merric who tried to cheer her up. True, it wouldn't take away the pain, but it would at least start to put her at ease and take her out of that moment, if only for a few minutes.

Harivaldr took the lead on questioning Will, and Sen had wandered off to look for the tracks and any other evidence he could find. Dathyra decided that checking for clues with Sen might be the best use of her time. After all, two sets of eyes looking might be more likely to find something. She always remembered Jodon's words:

"You see things others miss.  Trust yourself.  I do."

She saw that Sen was busy doing his own search and appeared to not want to be disturbed. Instead, she took to looking around on her own.

Perception: 23

Merric and Harivaldr stay and question Will and Elenore. 

Sen and Dathyra search for clues. ((where are each of you searching ??)) ((Sen a perception roll please))

Farmer Will MacGregor, his wife Eleanor, and their six children till 60 acres, rotating beans, wheat and corn behind their two story farmhouse situated on the south side of the main road. On the north side is a 60×80 foot livestock barn and 20 acres of fenced pasture, behind which lies the Northwood.

The description from earlier post. 

Sen perception: 16

Merric makes his way towards the livestock barn, carefully searching for tracks around the perimeter and just looking for anything that could be indicative of what happened.

Investigation: 22
Perception: 21
Survival: 7

Harivaldr will make his way towards the edge of the forest, doing his best to always be plainly visible to one of his fellow party members, or at the very least, not go behind any large masses of vegetation. For the most part, he'll stay within twenty feet or so of the forest's edge, going no deeper and searching for obvious tracks or trails on the forest floor.

Perception/Investigation (same modifier either way): 11