"HugghhAK!" Krackle would cough as he is grabbed by his hood and pulled back into the room. "OH YEAH! I forgot!" The kobold would reply before crawling into the saddle bags once again.

"Well make sure that you don't forget it again. These people will kill you if they know you're here." And once he's hidden in the bag, Vesper will head out and get some breakfast, taking a seat near Lumen. "You better keep a closer eye on your "luggage". Make sure that everything is packed up safe before you leave your room." She says, letting him know that Krackle almost ran out and possibly got himself killed. "Don't worry, I packed everything up for you in your room."

Chrys wakes up in the usual way she does - unwillingly.  „Mrrghghhmmmph,“ she mutters, sitting up slowly and rubbing the sand out of her eyes.  She gets halfway through her mindless routine of dressing herself and preparing to leave before she realizes that Krackle, and the saddlebags he was hiding in, are missing.  Eyes widening, her speed increases dramatically as she throws on her clothes and barely gives a thought to smoothing down her wild bed-head before klanking out of the room, desperately looking for her charge.

Part of the frazzlement wears off as she sees Vesper, Kess, and Lumen sitting at the tables with a suspiciously lumpy saddlebag in tow.  Seating herself at the table, she offers a sheepish grin to the others.  „Sorry ‚bout last night... I was havin‘ a fine ol‘ time until I got into it with that Crabapple woman.  Lost my head there when I got all riled up.“   As quickly as she can for not being a morning person, Chrys relays all of the information she found out from Frost, as well as her suspicions about the location of the magic pool cave, to the gnome who knew of the location of the goblin hideout.  „I got the feelin‘ this is gonna be a hard job,“ she says, reluctant to admit that Crabapple may have had a point.  „Let‘s take a stop by the outfitters first, an‘ get rid o‘ some of this dead weight we picked up.  We could all use the extra coin, especially with the warm welcome we‘ve been gettin‘ in this town.  Spreadin‘ a lil‘ coin always makes the locals less ornery, an‘ it might help us with them goblins, too.“

OOC: Vesper didn't take the saddlebag with Krackle out. She left it in Lumen's room and simply told him about it.

As you arrive in the common room, the same gruff innkeeper is present, and he attends to your needs with what would be considered the minimum amount of effort on the part of his service. The breakfast offering this morning is a generous plate of eggs, sausage and toast, for 2 sp, and it's pretty good for the price. Better than the goat stew you had last night. There are three or four other patrons in the room eating as well, but they keep to themselves and don't invite any conversation with you.

After you've finished crunching on the last piece of toast, you leave the inn and walk out into the cool morning air. The sky is still heavy with overcast clouds, but there is no rain. The mud on the street is definitely gloppier than it was yesterday.

You walk two doors down to see Flint the blacksmith. There's no sign on his shop, if it could even be called that. Nonetheless, you can hear the clattering of metal on metal as you approach, and when you arrive you see the red headed dwarf toiling away underneath a small covered workspace outside in front of the small stone building. At the moment, he's pounding away at a piece of metal on his anvil; it appears to be a horseshoe.

Flint doesn't see you at first; his head is down, and he's concentrating on his work, but when he does spot you after a bit, he stops hammering, stands up and offers you his greeting."

"Well, hello again and good mornin' to you folks. Off to hunt some goblins, are ye?"

(Ah I guess I was mistaken - I thought that Chrys had dropped Krackle in her room and asked Lumen to bring the two bowls of soup back to her room so that’s what Lumen did.)

Lumen looks at the breakfast and walks out the front door, pulling out road rations and sitting outside the inn looking at the less-wet town, eating hard tack. When the party moves along, he strums his lute as they walk, and the music starts to improve his mood. By the time they get to Flint, he is almost ready to talk to people again, and is eager to get information about goblins. He’ll pull out the things they purloined from the road and offer them up for Flint to see.

(I thought that too, but for the sake of story expediency, let's say somehow the Krackle'd saddlebags ended up with Lumen and here we are :P  )

Chrys pulls out her coins and opens her mouth to ask Lumen if he wants some breakfast, but he's already stalking out the door, obviously in a foul mood.  She nibbles at the rest of her breakfast half-heartedly.  "I got to learn to control my temper," she tells the others guiltily.  "I think Lumen there mighta taken my snubbin' yesterday personal."  Eyeing Vesper, she lets out a gusty sigh.  "How d'ya learn to be a people person anyhow?  Is there some sorta trick to it?"

After breakfast is over, Chrys steps out into the unwelcome squelch of a mud, and manages to somehow squish her way over to Flint's shop. 

"Good to see ya this morn," Chrys greets him heartily.  "And that is the plan.  But afore we do that, we've gotta lighten our load a bit.  Would ya be interested in lookin' at a few of our things we gathered while on the road?"

"I think you are nice Chrys." The dwarf and Vesper (and kess if she is there) hear muffled through the lumpy saddlebag as she eats her breakfast.

"Sure, I'll take a peek," Flint says with keen interest. "This ain't no mercantile, but there are always a few things I can use. And sometimes folk come trough here needing' a resupply. Lemme see what you got and I'll let ya know if I can afford to take it off yer hands."

Chrys motions the others over, and they pool their collected goods together.  When everything is sorted, there's a variety of equipment laid out before Flint (noticably minus the lumpy saddlebags, which are still slung over Chrys's shoulders), ranging from riding equipment, camping equipment, and of course, the various weaponry they'd secured from their skirmishes on the road.   "How much o' this would ya be willin' to take off our hands?"

Flint looks over your items and tugs at his beard while doing calculations in his head. 

"First off, these weapons ain't no good, you can see they haven't been cared for properly. You get 'em off o' some goblins or something? This crossbow is in decent enough shape, and I recnognnoie these bolts. They're the ones I sold that fella last week. The bow belonged to him, right? Poor bloke. It's worth about ten gold to me, includin' the bolts. The dagger's in fine shape too, I'll give ya another gold for that."

"Might be able to use the adventuring gear, the pack, bedroll, mess kit, waterskin tinderbox and rope. Another five gold for all that stuff. The saddle and tack, I s'ppose I can take offa yer hands too. Another 5 gold. I make horseshoes, so that makes me the official horse trader in Melton. I don't know if I can turn that stuff around too quickly, but you're here to do something good for our little village, so I'll take the hit if I can't unload it."

"That makes fifteen total. I can probably scrounge up the coin, but I'd rather trade, if there be something ya need instead."

"Well, if the money is tight, I was wonderin' if ya had some small items that we might trade for.  Ball bearins', caltrops, traps, or the like," Chrys says thoughtfully.  "Somethin' to help stack the cards in our favor if we ambush them goblins in their own lair."  She turns to the others.  "What 'bout the rest o' ya? Would ya rather have some coin in yer pockets, or somethin' from the store 'round here?"

"Oh, and anybody 'round here sellin' flasks of oil?" she adds as an afterthought.  "An' cloaks... we could all use some good raincoats, seems like."

"Ah got plenty o' oil, and I can make ye some caltrops. Take me about an hour or so to bang out a handful of 'em. Cost ye one gold for the lot, and a silver coin for each flask of oil."

"Don't have bearings, though, and ah don' have cloaks. Might try next door. Sadie trades in clothes 'n' fabric. She may have a pile of 'em lying around."

Krackle would just sit tight, trying not to make a sound... or fall asleep.

"Ok, thanks." Vesper will say, before allowing one of the party members to pay Flint and walking out. "Well, we've got an hour before he'll have the caltrops ready, so let's go talk to Sadie and then see what this Ellywick knows about Goblins."

Lumen is fine with selling all of that, trying to calculate his share. He’s ready to go see the gnome, and you can see his dour, frustrated expression starting to lift...

Chrys agrees to the trade, accepting 15 gold from Flint and giving 3 gold to everyone else.  "Thanks, and I'll be back to pick up them caltrops an' oil when we're done here," she says.   As they exit the shop, Chrys squints at the sky overhead.  It's still very early in the morning, but she thinks back on the hunters who lived in her little village - how early they would set off to stalk their prey, and how late they would come home, carrying their game.  Hunting was a tough job, and Ellywick - who didn't even know of the Pie Pals - was hardly going to wait on their needs.  

Damn, Chrys thinks to herself as she eyes Sadie's trade shop next door.  I ain't eager to get caught out in a rainstorm again with nothin' to protect me.  We'll be brought down by sickness 'fore we even face them goblins.  Still... priorities, and this town's safety comes before our comfort.  Resolving to get back to it later, she faces the others.

"Let's pick up them cloaks on the way back... it's early yet, and it's important to catch Ellywick 'fore she leaves ta go huntin'.  We gotta find those goblins, an' she's our best hope ta do it."  As she speaks, she points out where Flint told her Ellywick made her house, hoping that the gnome is still in.

Krackle would extend his tiny clawed hand from the saddle bag and take his three gold pieces with a muffled squeal of excitement once they had moved out into the street. 

"Indeed. If anyone could find those-" Kess would quickly move to obscure Krackle's excitedly clawing hand from view as she talked. "... ahem, could find those goblins, it would most certainly be a ranger who knows the land. Few things escape a ranger's notice without the aid of magic or sorcery."

She had been relatively quiet of late, but Kess had been listening and considering everything.

Cloaks and oil would certainly go quite a long way to making their lives easier, Kess reasoned to herself. The North was known to have wild, unpredictable weather at times, and the hills, plains and woodlands crawled with all matter of creature. Lighting a fire without taking the time to sufficiently conceal it was always a risky endeavor; it could prove to be a beacon to all manner of monster or creeping thing, or ne'er-do-wells. As a young girl, Kess' own uncle had even told her of one particularly horrifying incident where a band of her elven kin were brutally murdered by Drow raiders from the Underdark that had crept up to the surface in the night, the fire acting like a beacon to her usually more baleful kin.

Of course, not all of them were like that. Jax had certainly never done her harm, and had in fact done all in his power to keep her from danger.

She wondered how he was doing right about now?

It was at that point, however, that Kess broke away from her reminiscing took a moment to glance over at Lumen. Quietly, she glided over to him, gently putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" She asked, her face framed with concern as she locked eyes with him. "You seem a little... I don't know, troubled."

Flint throws another couple of logs into his forge fire and begins to gather bits of scrap metal and small shards of steel from a few buckets around his workplace. He finds a suitable number of pieces that he can heat, bend and sharpen into a handful of caltrops and assures you that they'll be ready in an hour, two at most. 

Leaving the dwarven blacksmith to his work, you walk down to the end of the muddy street, trying somewhat unseccessfully to avoid dipping your feet into some of the bigger puddles and deeper glops of mud. At the end, you cross over to the other side and walk up to the small stone house.

Out front, you see a stout human man, about 40-50 years old, with heavyset features, a mane of long, curly mane of thick black hair, with a beard to match, a weathered face and huge mitts for hands. He's standing at a carving table underneath a cloth tarp, cutting up chunks of fresh meat. Off to the side, you see a few racks of meat that he's sliced into jerky strips curing above an open hearth that's smoldering with a small fire and sending a steady stream of smoke upwards.

The man greets you with a nod. "Mornin'. Yer them adventuring folks I seen last night over at The Knight. Started talking' about goblins and such. What kin I do for ye? Lookin' for rations for yer hunting expedition?"