As Quintus boasts of his magical talents, perhaps using a little prestidigitation to create some fireworks from the palm of his hand, Davos sneers, unimpressed, and declines to respond.
From here, the journey to Alydar is a short one; ten more minutes south, and the city walls are in sight.
The land surrounding the city proper is mostly farmland, irrigated from the Great River, that which flows north to south and divides the continent in two. Alydar is situated just a few miles east of the river, and the relatively new gold mines are to the south. In the distance, farmers can be seen working the land.
As the party approaches the city gates, you notice something is wrong. The gates to the city are wide open, and there are no guards on watch outside the city; both of those circumstances are highly unusual. As you get closer, you see dead bodies strewn about the road immediately outside the gates. Some are dressed in the gray-and-gold uniforms of the City Watch; the others are mostly orcs, and some humans, all wearing green battle uniforms.
Inside the city, you find chaos. There are battles still raging, and by now most of the surviving attackers are orcs, being held at bay by groups of city guards.
As you take stock of the situation, a familiar voice speaks up. "You're all back! Thank the gods you've returned when you did. The mayor's daughter's been kidnapped!"
That voice belongs to Klaus. A spry half-elf who looks to be in his 40's (though it's hard to tell, considering his Elven heritage), he sports a thick, curly, dark-gray goatee to match his wild hair. He wields a rapier, dressed in a leather vest and black leather boots, and appears only slightly out of breath.
Before any of you have an opportunity to tell of your encounter on the road, he continues. "Listen to me. We've been duped. Somebody paid to send all my rangers on bogus missions in order to get them out of the city. You're the first group who's returned, and you're the only ones capable of going after kidnappers; these city slickers wouldn't be able to track an elephant through a mud-patch. We've got things under control here - hurry!"
((And here's where we move into our first Skill Challenge. Here's how it works:
Your objective as a group is to track down Clementine's kidnappers and catch up with them, in order to rescue her. To accomplish this mission, you're going to make a series of Skill Checks. You may use any of your skills, as long as you can come up with a legitimate way to progress toward your goal with that skill.
For this particular skill challenge, anything you might need in order to do a certain skill will be available to you - for example, if you need a tree to climb, you'll be able to find one; if you need someone to Intimidate or Diplomacize, there will be random passersby on the road; etc.
All four of you can go ahead and pick a skill to use and describe how you're using it, and roll. For this particular skill challenge, the DC is 18. You can't use the same skill as someone else that round, and you can't use the same skill twice in a row. This is basically like telling one sentence of a story, and then the next person continuing the story, and so on.
If you get a total of 7 Successes before you get 4 Failures, you win the skill challenge, and you'll get a bonus at the next encounter. We'll go round by round, with each of you making a check each round. I'll summarize how things turned out at the end of the round, and then if it's still going, the next round will start.
Good luck, and remember that this exercise is all about telling a story. If your explanation is particularly good, but your roll is close to the margins, I'm liable to go ahead and "round up" to a Success, so have fun with it. Sorry this explanation is so long winded. If you have questions, feel free to ask.))
