"That... would work. I would like to avoid drawing attention if possible. But that would get us to Tar Valon faster... Let's look at our other options first. We could ask for a room in exchange for a performance. Then the question is what we could perform... Can you play a musical instrument? That would depend if they had one... Maybe I could improvise a sword dance...I don't know if it would be any good. The Royal family will pay them for the horses and such, Correct? I guess your idea is the best option. Go ahead."

"Playing at an inn would draw as much attention. I may be able to go unnoticed when trying to stay out of others attention, but we are still in lands under Andors rule. Someone would be bound to know my face.

And yes, the horses would be paid for and the rooms compensated, from a fund normally reserved for when my mother travels. But it's the right thing to do in this case."

Are you going up to talk with the inn owner with Galad or waiting outside the inn? It occurs to you that he will be the focus of attention while inside, and while information is valuable your likeness was known by at least one group of white cloaks.

"That is true. Too bad I didn't think to bring my money. Oh well.

Anyway. That's good then. I'll leave the talking to you."

I'll go in close enough to listen in, But otherwise don't act to draw attention to myself.

The inn is small but abuzz of conversation. Galad enters and moments later you hear an audible shift in the level of conversation. You listen in to the conversation:
"Greetings Innkeep, I am Galadedrid Damodred of House Trakand. I regret having to ask this of you, but I must invoke birthright. A companion and I are traveling and are in need of a room for the night and two horses."
There is a moment of silence before
"Ah yes, of course Prince Damodred. It is an honor to serve the house of Trakand." And there is a rustling of keys. "A serving girl will be up with dinner in an hours time."

You hear the sound of someone walking up the stairs then and the inn slowly returns to its previous level of chatter

I'll quietly follow Galad upstairs to our room.

You enter the inn, and make your way up the stairs without anyone paying any apparent attention. There are about a dozen men and women at various tables, and the innkeep who id a grey haired man possibly in his late 50s.

When you get to the top of the stairs Galad is motioning, and then enters a room. When you enter you see him rearranging furniture. After you enter he closes the door and begins barricading the door.

"It may be paranoia, but i would rather not be caught off guard. The innkeep seemed off to me, and he did not follow the customs I had expected. All the same, we need rest and this is safer than on the road. And we really could use those horses."

"How was what he did different from what you where expecting? And what are we going to do about the servant girl when she comes up?"

"We could send her away, or set this up to be in position to barricade at will. That would raise less suspicion I suppose.

As to what was different, he should have given an oath of fealty when I mentioned the Queen. And I saw no ensignia of loyalty in the inn. I may just be paranoid, due to the unrest in Caemlyn when I last left."

"It is possible that they are loyal to the Children of the Light instead. I doubt they would assault you though. I would be careful though. Sleeping Drought or worse would be easy to slip in to the food they give us.

So we set up the door to barricade at will, accept the food to not appear odd, and only eat a little bit to see how the food affects us."

"I imagine it's going to depend on who all saw me down there. But loyalty to the whitecloaks has been an issue that's accelerating faster than I would expect. I wouldn't rule out assault, though I think it's unlikely."

Your barricade is set up with both of you helping easily enough, and arranged that you can knock out a supporting chair to cause a desk to crash and barricade the door quickly if need be. Or if given more time slide it over quietly.

Shortly after the serving girl, a late teens girl with raven black hair and blue eyes, delivers a tray of two generous portions of roast pig, seasonal berries, and two goblets of a deep red wine.

After she leaves, Galad moves to start barricading the door immediately, but quietly. "So I'm thinking we should try and eat some of the meat, as it's harder to dose than the liquid and we need energy for tomorrow. The berries are too much of a risk, and while the wine is risky... we do need something to drink."

Do we have any water left?



"That makes sense. We could just drink the wine a little at a time to see if it affects us."

I'll enter the Flame and the Void variant that intensifies my senses.
I'll eat a bit of the roast and drink some of the wine to see if anything tastes odd.

You have about a quarter of the waterskin left. You don't think there is any chance you would die of thirst on your travels even if that waterskin was all the two of you drank, but it would do a number on your body and not leave you in the best fighting condition if such a thing is required.

You enter the flame and the void and take a small bite of the pig roast and wait a few minutes. It tastes fine, if poorly seasoned. It strikes you that it's particularly low grade to serve high royalty. Even a high merchant might take offense.

You move on to the wine while Galad is still processing his bite of pig roast. You sip it and taste a rich grape taste. In contrast to the pig roast this is an incredible wine. It has several subtle notes of flavor and a refreshing cedar overtone. It's only your heightened awareness that lets you realize there is a secondary note there, masked by its similarity to the cedar overtone of the wine.

"... The roast isn't that good. I'm surprised that they gave this to you. Hold on for a bit on the wine. I taste something masked by the cedar overtone of the wine."

I monitor how I feel to note the effect of what ever I tasted.

You feel your senses trying to dull after about 15 minutes. It almost feels like the void is trying to collapse in on itself. You suspect you would be in severe danger of being incapacitated had you drank more or if the void didn't shelter you partially.

Even still your limbs feel slightly sluggish.

"Yeah... The wine was drugged. My senses are getting dull from the little bit I drank. and I feel sluggish. We should be getting company. This was meant to incapacitate if we drank it all. Should we try to escape?"

Galad curses, a sight you don't see often, and then says
"We could run, but it's the end of a day that was already long, and if you're not able to move quickly from the wine to begin with... if we need to run we'll need horses. I see no other way of staying ahead of whoever is trying to incapacitate us. Or for that matter if the poison isnt something that in a larger dose would kill after incapacitation. We might be able to get out of the window and to the stables before anyone could see us. Either that or just try and sneak out of town, if we get far enough before they notice we're gone our speed may not matter."

"Sneaking out the window and getting the horses sounds like a solid plan. Let's do that."

I'll follow him out the window to the stables.

Are you eating or bringing any of the roast pig with you?

The two of you sneak out the window and walk carefully along the roof in the full dark of the night.

You make it over to the section of the roof above the stables and see a stable hand leaving, hopefully for the night.

Galad climbs down first, and checks that all is clear before you follow, much less acrobatically than you are accustomed to, but without falling or making a lot of noise.

The stables have 6 pens, 5 of which have horses in them. There is one war horse, two riding horses, and 2 carriage horses. It appears the war horse was only recently put in the the stables as he is the only one awake and staring at you and Galad. He hasn't moved to winnie yet, but also doesn't look calm.

I'll see if we have anything to wrap the roast pig in and take it with us. The bedsheets might work.

I'll comment to Galad about the warhorse.
"That warhorse doesn't like us. We better hurry up with those riding horses before it makes a scene."

You wrap the meat in the blanket easily enough.

------
You try and quickly get the the riding horses without further disturbing the war horse when the world turns chaotic.

In the course of only a handful of seconds several things happen. You see that the war horses bridal bears the white sunburst of the whitecloaks, which wasn't visible from your original vantage. At the same time as you see that you hear a man in armor coming. You and Galad manage to mount the riding horses however and tear out of the stables.

The war horse has started to neigh loudly, and there are shouts from behind you of "I demand you stop"etc.

Are you making a path to the forest which parralella the road, or straight down the road towards Tar Valon?

I would go down the road as fast as possible.  Unless Galad lead us off the road.

I would continue for as long as the horses could keep up the pace.

Galad is behind you slightly and following your lead. You both push your horses to the fastest sprint they can manage. They are apparently fine breeds, as they manage to ride the several hours remaining to get to the bridge to Tar Valon.

You see the warhorse and rider follow doggedly but fail to gain ground on you and Galad. When the bridge of Tar Valon comes into sight he finally rears his horse and falls back.

As you get to the bridge, your horse is visibly flagging. You suspect if you don't let it rest soon it will break a leg or otherwise injure itself. Meanwhile your own exhaustion and the drug that you imbibed are pressing in on you. The void you formed is shaking in your mind, threatening collapse at any moment. You arent sure what effect it snapping from exhaustion will have, but you feel that you need to sleep soon.

Galad looks tired as well, but no where near as much as you feel.

I'll Dismount my horse after we get past the Bridge and lead it to the White Tower.

"One can almost admire their tenacity if they weren't planning on doing something really unpleasant to get their version of the truth out of you.

One I lose the Flame and the Void, The fatigue and that drug are going to hit me hard, I rather not pass out and fall off a horse.

Let's get to the Tower. They need to know the information we have."

You tell Galad your plans and he starts to say something as you feel the void pop, and everything it was keeping out,the fatigue, the hunger,the pain, all come rushing in like the waters of a broken dam. Your vision swims and then goes black as you barely hear Galad say something that is unintelligible at that point.

-------------

You open your eyes and see a very tired looking Shemerin Sedai looking down at you. You can see out of a window off the side that it's still dark, though dawn is threatening to arrive. Your fatigue is gone and you don't sense any remnant of poison, though you are ravenously hungry.

Verin speaks from just off to the side, "Galad here indicated that there was a conflict, and that you were poisoned. Good thing he mentioned that too, as you wouldn't have woken up otherwise.

Now that this is taken care of, what were you running from so much that you abandoned your fellow trainees and drove yourself near to death in exhaustion?"

I flinch when she mentions abandoning them.

"We weren't planning on rushing here like this.

Yesterday things where going well with our survival training. We split into three groups. Galad led a group in hunting. Gawyn lead a group in foraging. And the last two stayed at our camp to keep the fire going and make the tools we needed. Later that day Gawyn's group had returned to camp but Galad and his group where still out.

We formed two search parties to go and look for Galad and the others. Myself and Bogar where one Gawyn and Darian where the other one.

Bogar and I when in the direction that Galad when in the morning. We found a dead Whitecloak scout with this letter. There where signs of a struggle between at least four people in that area."

I pull out the Letter and give it to Verin

"Apparently the Whitecloaks are watching me. Anyway, There where two trails We followed one and it lead to a field that I couldn't follow it in. When we returned the Whitecloak's body was gone and the other trail had been hidden better. We managed to find it again and it lead to another field. But this one contain the bodies of a dozen Whitecloaks and their horses.

But we found Most of Galad's group. Only Dahvin was missing. We determined that Galad and the others hadf been hit with a sleeping drought that left them unconscious. We then worked to carry Galad and the others back to camp. Carrying three people when you only have two guys is very hard. But we found Gawyn's search party and they helped us carry them back to the camp.

We got back and disscussed what was going onwith the Whitecloaks and Dahvin. at this point Galad woke up and we got was happened. Dahvin prepared the waterskin that morning. As they where hunting, they got thirsty and Dahvin offered it to them. But it contained a sleeping drought. Which knocked them out.

We don';t have an explanation of how those Whitecloaks died. Maybe Dahvin killed them all. Maybe he had help. Ether way something is going on and the White Tower needed to know about it.
So I decided to set off in the morning. After a terrible night's sleep and a weird dream, I thought someone to watch my back would be a good idea. Galad volunteered.

We walked most of the day back to Tar Valon. and decided to rest at an in using Galad's status... Things where off. The inn keeper didn't do the proper oath of fealty to the queen and there was no ensignia of loyalty in the inn.

When went up to the room and set up a barricade at the door. They brought us food and wine. The roast pig was poor. I tried a little of the wine to test for poisons... It was poisoned. I managed to taste it by using the Flame and the Void. That alerted us to the need to get out of there.

We escaped out the window as the effects of the poision started hitting me.
By the way could you teel what kind of poison it was with the One Power?
Anyway, we went to the stables. Apparantly they called the Whitecloaks because one of their horses where there. We took two riding horses and the Whitecloak chased us on his warhorse. All the way to Tar Valon. There he backed off at the bridge.

One can almost admire their tenacity if they weren't planning on doing something really unpleasant to get their version of the truth out of you.


I dismounted at this point and then My Flame and the Void Collapsed and I passed out"