<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span class="bbc_u">Chapter One - Chasing Leads</span></span></span></div><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Scene One - Trouble in Listan</span></span></div><br/><div align="center">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rcburner/Mulmoran-Listan.jpg)</div><br/>Whether by fate, birth, or sheer chance, you and your newfound acquaintances have found yourselves in the hillside community of Listan.  Falling under the domain of the aged King Ulrich XXVI, it has prospered in spite of years of regional turmoil, war, plague, and famine.  It is a town of drooping gabled rooftops, smoked glass windows, and chimneys stained black from the heat of countless coal fires.  Though the harvest season is only just within sight, the North Wind has already painted the morning dew with his sparkling frost, and the first light of morning sets the white fields ablaze.  The houses seem to huddle together for warmth, as do its bleary-eyed occupants, who are only now rousing themselves for a long day of work.<br/><br/>But it is not your place to tend to the fields, or shear the lumbering uru of their precious wool for the winter months ahead.  Called by rumor or request, for want of coin, challenge, or justice, you and those beside you have been called to the town barracks by former Captain Jason Brackett.  In the past three months young women have been disappearing with startling frequency, snatched from cold streets or warm beds by some unknown assailant and carried off to some unknown end.  The people have grown frightened and, lacking any other target, have begun lambasting the town guard for their inability to defend the town against these nocturnal predations.<br/><br/>This much he told you when you arrived.<br/><br/>Captain Brackett was just what one would expect from an old guardsman.  He had the sort of face that must have been handsome in his hay day but now drooped with the weight of age, pitted with pocks and old scars.  There was still plenty of brown hair atop his head, though that widow's peak was quickly catching up to him, and the thick scruff lining his neck and jowls had turned a rugged shade of gray.  He looked weary and more than a little desperate.  As he'd just finished telling you, his daughter had been the last one taken, not two weeks ago.<br/><br/>"I'm at my wits end," he said frankly, turning up the old gas lamp that provided light and warmth for the room.  "We don't have the resources to mount a full-scale search and rescue, and the<em>good King</em>has his own concerns to worry about."  From the look on his face, it was clear what his opinion was on<em>that</em>.<br/><br/>Brackett stared between his three guests, stopping on Tara.  He gave her a pained smile.  "So I only have one recourse left to me, and that's to hire out merce-I mean,<em>adventurers</em>.  I'll admit that I was hoping for more interested parties," he added, his gaze lingering on Kyet and<em>especially</em>on Elise, who he seemed to have trouble keeping eye contact with.  "But this is the last chance I have.  No one else wants to set out this close to winter, but by the time spring comes the trail may very well be lost."<br/><br/>He grunted as he leaned to one side, drawing up three sacks that jingled as he set each on the table between them.  "I'm willing to pay each of you fifty silver up front.  Use it however y'like, though it should be more than enough to pay for room and board for quite some time.  If you bring back my daughter alive, or...proof of her death, you'll all be rewarded handsomely.  One-thousand gold coins each--that's ten-thousand silver.  Small fortune.  Was to be Caroline's dowry, if she wed, but I don't have much use for it now."<br/><br/>The man forced a smile that was more of a grimace.  "So?  Will you take the job?"<br/>