Scarp Burrow

Examining the overgrown, long unmaintained and slightly listing ‘Wayside shrine’, Liga Bur tries to dredge up some trace of a memory. Barbella had referred to them as ‘Thumb-shrines’ due to their diminutive two-foot height, upper-half arch-like recesses and rounded stone tops. Apparently there were dozens of them, dotted about in the surrounding area. All long abandoned now, but with different carvings and implied offerings. This one’s shallow alcove still contained the broken remnants of a tiny pottery vase and the engraved image of a daisy-like flower below the ‘window’ supported that assumption. 

The town itself is built on several central hillocks but the surrounding, smaller mounds, still display evidence of unused Halfling defences. Forgotten and settled, perfectly round boulders, once ready to set thundering down the slopes, now lie half-buried in the soil, their wooden chocks and short iron levers, rotted away or rusted to uselessness.

Once back through… Scarborough’s ten-foot-tall outer palisade wall, Liga Bur allows the others to bluff their way to O’Maley’s lockbox treasure and is unbothered by the separation of Henshaw, Barbella and Doberman. If he’s learnt anything about these three men, it’s that they’re all natural born survivors. 

Now, that his attitude has been altered and his inner ‘third’ eye has been opened by his mentor; Thornberg, he notices all the clues he missed during his first visit here, many months ago. The complicated underground tunnels and, low-ceilinged storage system and the occasional, architecturally mismatched, cellar doorway.

Perhaps he just didn’t want to see the obvious signs last time? Perhaps he deliberately avoided contact with the travelling Halfling acrobat troop, out of some misplaced sense of shame? What did he know of Halfling culture beyond secretly studying and learning the language as a child?

But now, he could no longer ignore or deny the truth. The Lightning Tree had been right; this used to be a Halfling settlement. A peaceful farming community, attacked and overrun about twenty to thirty years ago by an ambitious and uncaring Sir Briefadel! 

Desecrated by the mercenaries under his command. Human mercenaries probably. Immoral sell-swords just like Henshaw, Barbella and Doberman!