Red starts massaging a temple. "There's no way I can keep you out of a fight if one comes up, is there."

"Not really, no," Martin replies with a smirk.

And proceed down the road you do, ignoring the tavern, filled with well-worn travelers and grizzled mercs, all with stories to tell, past the town store and trading area with its baubles and trinkets, and by the low, squat houses that make up the bulk of the town of Placerville, each with a family inside living a life just as rich and as detailed as your own. You leave all that rich, hard-crafted detail behind and walk back down the boring old road along the border of the swamp.

After a while, the caravans you pass seem to be better...protected than before, and the trading posts and lay bys are less open markets of home-made food and drink passed along with the small trinkets the children made and more small fortresses. Something bad is going on out here, and even though no one says it, the name seems to be on everyone's lips - Descoteaux. As the group wanders over to one of the larger trading posts along the trail, a collection of shacks selling the produce, meat and gee-gaws of several local farms, everyone seems to be keeping one eye on the group. To be fair, they are strangers here, and some are stranger than others - Q flits under the awnings of the various shacks, looking at some of the smaller fruits hanging from strings on the ceiling. This seems like a good enough place as any to try to get a gauge on what's going on in the farms outside of town - if for no other reason than every other place has seemed equally hostile.

Martin leads the way in investigating again, sauntering up to a stand to buy a good amount of beef jerky. As he hands over the coin, he looks around the market, as if only noticing the security measures at that moment.

"How are you doing out here?" he asks. "Everywhere I go, I hear Descoteaux, but I haven't seen them...they're animal-men, yeah?"

(Martin Talk: Roll 1: 1d10: 1d10(4) = 4; 1d8: 1d8(1) = 1
Townsfolk Think: Roll 1: 1d6: 1d6(5) = 5)

The man running the stand eyes Martin suspiciously with his bloodshot peepers, looks at the coin in his hand, and then cautiously hands over the beef jerky. "Don't know nuttin'," he mutters. "'specially for someone so smiley for strangers. Go on, git." He turns around and stagger-steps to the other side of his stall.

Martin walks back to the group, tearing off half of a strip of jerky with his teeth.

"Maybe one of you should ask the questions from now on," he says. "I don't think I'm having too much luck with this information-gathering thing."

"Nobody knows 'nuttin' at first," Ozzy steps up to the stall after Martin strikes out. "But I reckon they might know someone what knows somethin', before their fuckin' stall gets set on fuckin' fire."

Ozzy smiles at the fucker now, and it doesn't even come close to reaching his eyes. "Am I smiley enough for you, cocksucker?"

(attempting to use Will -> intimidation instead of Talk)

(Ozzy Intimidate: 1d12 = 9
Townsfolk Will: 1d6 = 6)

The skinny fucker turns back around, ready to give Ozzy the biggest stink-eye he can. "Now see here, you daft bastard, I told you to -"

And he comes eye to...collarbone with Ozzy. He looks up, his "mean swamp bastard" glare already starting to waver, and by the time he gets up to the dirty, unkempt hair and mis-matched eyes of Oswald von Bruckenheimer, Mage What Goes Boom extraordinaire, his eyes are wide for an entirely different purpose. In those green and blue eyes, he sees the look of someone who isn't above creating a little "accidental" conflagration out of nowhere contained to just his shack - and quite possibly his person. A little wisp of smoke comes out of Ozzy's nostril, just for good measure.

"Yep," he yelps. "Heard 'em in the fog." His voice is at least one octave higher. "No one's seen 'em, everyone's heard what happened to 'em over at their plantation. They've been consorting with the beasts, what happened."

Let it never be said that thugs don't have their uses.

Ana listens to the skinny swamp merchant spill what he knows to Ozzy, frowning slightly.

"A plantation, out in the swamp I assume. This is going to end with me hip-deep in something unspeakably disgusting, isn't it?"

"If it didn't, I'd be worried we were on the wrong trail," Ozzy quips.

Red turns to the merchant, brow furrowed. "What were the Descoteaux growing, before they went crazy? Same things as before?"

"Yeah, pears, beans, cucumbers, all kinds of fruits and veggies and shit," the twitchy merchant replies as he turns his attention to Red, giving him a curious look. "Then, nothin', then, the beast-men come. Why you askin'?"

Red smirks. "Just reminiscing on better times, is all."

Red turns back to the group and leads them to another stall, grabbing some fruit for everyone...including a couple ripe pears.

"So you might just get your wish after all, Ana," he says, handing her the pears. "There might still be a way onto the plantation: taking the old irrigation system. Does simple swamp water strike you as sufficiently disgusting, or are you too desensitized from our sewer romps to care?"

"In any case," Red addresses the group at large, "It's been around ten years since Beau and I took that route in on our little raids, so there still might be changes...ugly-ass animal heads aside."

"We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in sewers," Martin remarks, starting on a new strip of jerky. "Is there another, sunlit way?"

"Beau and I couldn't find anything else, not without swimming through actual swamp, and I doubt the land itself has changed much since I left," Red replies. "And it's just a canal, Martin. It's not like some cavernous sewage complex under some monastery."

"My thoughts went more to the storm drains and caves underneath Ripperdan," Martin says, then smirks. "Which did have its agreeable parts, admittedly."

"See? What's not to love?" Ozzy adds.

Red shakes his head. "I don't know what's worse: that you'd dive through more grungy sewers for the chance to get laid, or that you'd have to race me there."

Ana takes a bite out of the pear, a somewhat disgusted look on her face.

"I don't know if this is the source of you gentlemen's problems, but sewage is generally considered one of the less desirable traits in a mate."

Red snickers derisively. "Pretty sure that if we have any problems of this sort, it has more to do with the fact that we're all batshit insane and running towards danger instead of away from it - a problem you share with us as long as you keep following us into dark, dank places."