Subject Surin Report in

Surin can hear the murmur of voices as he approaches the camp, and he freezes.There's something about the mood of those voices...something was wrong. Something had happened. His passage through the wood, already silent, takes on an almost ghostlike quality as he slips from shadow to shadow, moving with a stealth that makes his earlier, more playful attmepts to move silently seem like the blundering of some clumsy beast in comparison. At the camp's edge he pauses for a moment, taking in the scene.

It's hard to see in this light, but something, something huge, lies still in the middle of camp, and his companions are ministering to one another's wounds. Recognizing that the threat is long past, Surin steps into the firelight [ooc: assuming that there's a fire. If there isn't, read that sentence as "Surin steps into the camp"], allowing himself to be seen, and gives a low whistle. "I can't leave you folks alone for five minutes before you get into trouble of one sort or another," he says, a smile spreading across his face.

It is just after the words have passed his lips that he sees what remains of Alatyr. He pales, though it isn't visible in the dim camp, and turns away, his lips tight. The last time he'd seen this man he'd been a living, breathing companion. Now he was so much meat--whatever had attacked him had torn him in two, and the dark mass of his intrails spilled out across grass black with congealing blood. This is the first time Surin has seen a dead man, and it is a moment before he trusts his voice enough to speak. "What...what happened here? What *is* that thing?" he asks, pointing that the slain bugbear. He approaches the beast's corpse, and picking up a stick pokes at it's wounds. "And who's that?" he says, gesturing at the newcomer with the now bloody stick. "Seems to me you all have a story to tell just as much as I do."

He's still a bit dazed by what he has found here, and it takes him a moment to realize that he'd spoken almost at the same time as had Ran.

"Our friend Alatyr was a brave man," their leader had said. "He fought with us as a brother. We will honor him with a proper burial, but it must wait at least a moment. Let us hear what our friend Surin has discovered. Alatyr would not want us to waste time in completing his quest. We must not allow this tragic happening to deter us from our task."

Surin nods--Ran is thinking straighter he, Surin, had been. Clearly whatever had happened here was over, and the story of it would keep while he told his own.

"Well, good news is, Rochelle's okay. Looks a bit rumpled, but whoever hired these goons wants her alive and unharmed, more or less. Bad news is, him as did the hirin' seems to have had a falling out with those did the taking. We can expect bloodshed down there in a few days, and I wouldn't be surprised if her blood weren't the first gets spilled." With that he launches into an account of his trip into camp, his worming his way under Rochelle's prison, and the altercation that he observed between the boss's men and the half-orc, taking care to leave nothing out.

"So there you go. She's safe for the moment, but Iwouldn't give much for her chances once the boss man shows up that those idiots down there realized he ain't interested in paying for her so much as taking her now. I thought about trying to get her out myself, then and there, but that floor would've made more noise than a cat in heat if I'd started prying at the floor boards, so I decided to just come back and report. Wanted to at least let her know that we was out here, but that half-orc was just a little too alert for that to've been a good idea. Besides, it they're smart they might notice that she started acting different, and beat her 'till they learned the reason why."