After travelling past some of the areas roaring waterfalls – where I swam out under them to check for a curious hobbit girl back in Clegur – I arrived at a water mill at the base of a cliff. The few hobbits who lived here promised to show me the way to the nearby village of Glyn Helyg, but spoke worriedly about the bandits at Ratlaw, the very place I recently infiltrated

I was quite dismayed to hear of the bandits resurgence, and I decided to go back and lessen their enthusiasm by also defeating some of the lesser bandits in the hierarchy – having taken out the brunt of their officers earlier. Hopefully noone will want to do the dirty business of banditry anymore – neither officers or brutes.

In return, the local hobbit by the name of Cranog Dambryn, showed me the secret way to the “Village in the sky”, that Leri Grudd originally spoke of. It turned out that the local village of Glyn Helyg was the self-same “Village in the sky”, even if it was not even in the sky – it was just on the cliffside – but with marvelous views, and the most robust hobbit holes I have yet encountered – dug directly into the cliffs. I finally managed to deliver Leri’s package to her cousing Gwenfor.

I helped the local villagers with their various problems to make them trust me enough to speak of the evils I seek. I helped a hobbit with a little too much to drink sober up enough to realize he was getting late for dinner – he was very worried about missing dinner, which seems like exactly how a hobbit would react to having drunk a bit too much. I inspected the bridges of the town – since the hobbit in charge seemed a bit under the weather – and found all but one to be in excellent condition. I even went to cut down some trees to help her make new planks, though they seemed intimidatingly large (I sure hope not too have to do this too often, for the longest time, I simply looked around for smaller trees, never realizing I was about to cut down some of the large ones). I even raced from the village to the water mill to settle a local bet.

In the end, a hobbit ensured me that they would have noticed any goblins or uruks, and it would have been the talk of the town – but that another nearby settlement of Lintrev might have more news. One hobbit was worried about plantes tainted by darkness that she had observed, so despite their assurances that everything is fine here, I will need to investigate more.

Before the end of the day, I explored the local waterfall, and found a non hobbit skeleton – presumely to have fallen a long time ago. I hired a horse to deliver the news back to Clegur, to a very excited adventurous hobbit. Maybe the young ones of the small folk are not so set to stay in their holes as the elderly would have us believe.