Jan/Feb '23 Lite Challenge: Whatever happened in Millgate?
"You wake up, your head is banging. A sourness invades your nose, an unpleasant aroma of mead, ale, cider and some sort of herbal liqueur along with onion and spices. You hear shuffling from somewhere. Something scrapes across the other side of the ceiling above you. You open the shutter and are immediately dazzled by the sun. You remember fragments of the night before, the Spring Equinox celebrations in Orbistone. The night barge to Millgate. There's a flask of water on the nightstand. You take a drink. It's stale but still refreshing given your stinking hangover. You realise it's almost midday, remembering the first glow of twilight as you made your way to your room in the Towman's Rest. The revelry continued with your fellow passengers from Orbistone. A nightcap or three.
You get dressed and make your way down towards the inn's dining room/bar area. You meet several other guests but nobody else seems to be here. The fire is out and doesn't look like it's been lit for at least several days which is weird because it was definitely lit yesterday afternoon when you arrived, a cauldron of steaming soup simmering above it. There's no barkeep and it seems nobody is in the kitchen either. One of you shouts "Hello!" but there's only silence. You wander out into the street and the market square. There's nobody here. The buildings around look to be abandoned. A market stall lays on its side. A bustling village yesterday, the place looks like it was abandoned years ago."
Orbistone is an important city in the Midlands. It is set high up in an otherwise lowland area and overlooks the land around to quite some distance. It sits on the watershed between two major rivers, the River Calmer to the North and the Faster River to the South. Tributaries to each river rise near Orbistone and have been engineered to be navigable by barge all the way. They are imaginatively named "North Link" and "South Link", I'll leave you to decide which one is which. There are also many roads that pass through. Trade is a very important part of Orbistone's economy as forest goods, iron and copper are brought down river from the west and other trade goods are brought from the east. The Spring Equinox is a significant time here as the trade in many goods starts to increase after the winter lull. The Equinox Festival is a week long event and visitors from all over the realm flock here to visit and to join in the celebrations. Despite it not being the capital city many trade deals are set up here and royal representatives are always on hand to bid on voyages to sponsor. The inns and taverns of Orbistone are therefore overfilled during this period. The Duke's palace, hall and even his hunting lodge are retained for the King and his entourage. Apart from "Derek the Uncouth", which is another story, the Duke and his family are allowed to stay with the king.
This means that there's no room at the inn. Any inn. If you want to experience Orbistone and you're not rich or royalty then you're going to have to stay elsewhere. One such elsewhere is Millgate, a small village to the north on the banks of the North Link river/canal thing. The N. Link is serviced by towpaths going both north and south but the village is on the southbound (uphill) part.
You (and your party) wake up to find the whole village is deserted and seems to have been so for months or even years. You have to search for clues and try to piece together "Whatever happened in Millgate?"
