The next few months passed relatively peacefully; due to a terrible fishing accident that left half a dozen children orphaned, the town rallied together to request the construction of an orphanage. Once things had settled down somewhat, an exploration expedition was launched, to map some of the nearby regions for settling. Along the way, the group, lead by Akiros, stumbled across an expedition of gnomish explorers, led by a rather bold and outspoken man by the name of Jubilost Narthropple. After a harrowing encounter that involved the explorers heroically rescuing the gnome's wagon from the river, they invited the band of gnomish explorers back to the capital, for possible employment and negotiation, as Jubilost was a master cartographer, and had been making a point of mapping out the River Kingdoms, currently in search of an old dwarven fort that lay somewhere in the region.