Elmar Barthan

Elmar let the reins of the oxen slip loosely through his fingers, back and forth as the mighty beasts pulled his wagon. They had been at it long enough now to know how to follow a road and it let Elmar concern himself with keeping an eye out for bandits rather than actually steering. It had been a long trip thus far from Phandalin, but he HAD to leave. After those damned Redbrands shook him down for months it was a kick in the stones to have a reawakening of evil rising up out of the Sword Mountains.

The night the goblins, bugbears, and spiders came pouring into town led by that drow wizard was the night Elmar decided to leave for good. The cries in the night, the looting of anything of value, the smell of the bastards all paled in comparison to what the morning brought. When Elmar was finally able to push the broken table off the top of the secret door and crawl out the first sight that greeted him was the decapitated head of his newly hired help. The young dwarf lad he had taken on part time to clean the place after closing had fallen victim to the looting of the store.

"Hope the lad died quickly." He muttered to himself as he surveyed the the destruction wrought on his shop. There was a smell in the air. Something along the lines of copper and burnt mutton. The front door was off the hinges and lay broken with a handaxe embed in it. Stepping through the opening, it immediately clicked. The smell.... the god awful smell.

It was the TOWN. He had originally thought that it was dawn. The fires from the buildings is where the light came from. The bodies of his clients, friends, acquaintances laid in pieces. The small shrine in the middle of town had been desecrated and the poor elven woman who kept it up could barely be identified. Her naked body was in pieces, on pikes arranged in a crude circle around the sign of Maglubiyet.

The light of the town seemed to fade.

"oh the fires are dying..." was the last thought through his mind as it shut down. Elmar fainted, falling hard to the road that ran through the twice ruined town of Phandalin

He woke up coughing. The coughing cleared the smoke from the dying fires from his sore lungs. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes Elmar surveyed his current situation. The fires had all but died, but the smoldering, choking, black smoke of the bodies and thatch held thick in the air. He coughed again as he rose to his feet. The hacking bent him over as he rose. Raspy coarse coughs ravaged his throat. After the spell had passed he stood straight up and looked around again.
 
Seeing everything for the second time took none of the bite out of it. Or maybe it had, since he didn't faint this time. Walking slowly to back to the provision shop, he decided to look for anything salvageable and get out of this god awful place. The search didn't take long. Nothing was left. All he was able to take was the cash box with 1000 gp that he kept in the cellar with him.
 
"Might be enough to rebuild a small shop at least."
 
Elmar searched around town for what traveling supplies he could find. The inn had some dried food stuffs that had survived the looting. It wasn’t so much that the food in town had been taken, it was more that the food in town had been destroyed. Trampled under the feet of the goblins, bugbears, and whatever else came into town with them. There wasn't much that had survived in the shops in town, but he remembered the apple trees. Yes, there were two at the Alderleaf place and a grove up north at the Edermath orchard. He decided to hit the farm on the south side of town first and fill up his bag with whatever was left as he left town.
 
As he walked through the gate to the farm yard he surveyed the damage. The farm house had been burnt to the ground and two smoking corpses lay in the front yard. One slightly smaller than the other, but by their size he knew they were halflings. The apple tree around back had a few apples that weren't quite ripe, but he grabbed them anyway. It was going to be a long trip.
 
Elmar was able to make his way uneventfully to Neverwinter. The roads were surprisingly quiet. The only thing he had to hide from was the occasional dragon flying overhead. It was strange to see one at all, even stranger to see 3 on the way to the city. They all seemed to be heading south.
 

He knew of a small town on the road south of Baldur's Gate called Greenest. It was an up and coming trade route that would be a good place to start over….