Since Gonchar was not leveling-up, he passed the time between adventures by volunteering to ride with the Castellan’s men on patrols of the region around Markheim and Ninax’s Blockhouse. He was given a small-ish pony of surprisingly-surpassing speed (“Mala”), and was told by the men he would be riding with to get used to the horse for a day or two, for they must ride swiftly. Gonchar got used to the pony for a day or two, and the animal was smart and fast, and Gonchar - a below-average rider at best - was soon able to ride well and with speed with only two days of getting used to Mala. He was also fitted for lighter chain mail armor, as he was told that plate would not work for the kind of riding they’d be doing.

Gonchar rode with the patrol (8 men, including him) for a couple weeks. The leaders were Fredlyn and Yaz, two rangers who knew the area well. There were local 4-men-at-arms, and Valentio Rossi, a highly-skilled rider, fighter and bowman from the southern part of Achea (#1 on the world map).

The group patrols the lands north and east of Markheim, where there were farms and small villages surrounding the main town and Ninax’s Blockhouse. Some of these were fairly far from Markheim. At one point the patrol came across a large group or armed men, led by a smiling red-headed man with bad teeth - they outnumbered the patrol, but only briefly engaged and departed quickly. Fedlyn and Yaz told him that they were certain these men were bandits, but had no firm proof. If they were, they were smart enough to avoid battles they could not win, duck battle with the Castellan’s men, or to get caught misbehaving. They thought perhaps these men served Custalcon.

The only major encounter during Gonchar’s time on the patrol was when the patrol came on a large group of gnolls who had recently sacked and burned a small, remote farm. The patrol engaged them cautiously, until Gonchar rode amongst them, hurling his hammer at the leader and slaying him in a single shot, and then brutally reaving the gnolls with axe, slaying fully half of them - until, finally, the rest of the patrol and engaged the gnolls, slaying most and scattering the rest.

From this point, the patrol viewed Gonchar with great respect, and when the group were in Markheim during evenings, they purchased him many ales at the Bottomless Keg.

The Southerner, Valentio Rossi, in particular bought many ales for Gonchar, and clearly impressed by Gonchar’s might in battle, treated him as a respected warrior and told many tales of his own past battles. He hailed from southern Achea near the coast and Portown. This area (again, #1 on the Osgoth world map) was a generally Mediterranean medieval society, think Greece/Italy, and he looked the part. He was talkative, and told Gonchar (who listened, occasionally grunts, and drinks more) that he did some soldiering in Achea before growing bored and traveling west, to the Achean Highlands (map., #3), where he fought Hobgoblins for a while for a local Duke, before heading south to a town called Ruatha, on the southern border near the Qeb Mountains (#6A, world map). He said Ruatha was “quite a place” (rolling his eyes). On the banks of a HUGE river, they called it ‘The Great Source’. The Upper Town was full of cattlemen and soldiers, that’s where all the money was. The Earl of the Warrens had a huge fighting force there - towers full of soldiers, and entire barracks of archers, plus the damn Earl also used humanoids - ogres and giants, if you’d believe! - to guard their keep and bolster their forces. He’d never seen anything like it, he said. He guessed centuries ago the Stygians invaded and there was a great battle here, and Ruatha had been expecting the next wave ever since! They also had a big calvary, which rode out to guard the cattle herds from tribesmen who were always raiding. He rode with them for a while - they paid well - and they were constantly fighting with these dark-skinned tribes, they said they used to be Stygians but found new gods. He didn’t know. All he knew was that they were astoundingly good riders and bowmen, and they had their hands full. There were other tribes - pale-skinned mountain barbarians, from up in the Qeb Mountains, but they worshipped other gods and seemed to have no beef with Ruatha. Those barbarians had a strange temple in the Upper Town, and so…

“I’ll tell you though - the place to be was the lower town. All the Stygian immigrants lived in Lower Ruatha. Good folk - southerners were a little different, they had their own magic and gods, but they were welcoming to all and the food was great. The Upper Town wouldn’t even let Stygian folk up there, they treated them like dogs - but then they let Ogres up there, made no sense to me. The hunter’s guild in Lower Ruatha was full of some of the best rangers and bowmen he’d ever met, and they knew the land well. Rough men - but once he figured out how much they loved northern whiskey, they were willing to give him plenty of information about where to find waterholes and what places to avoid when he was patrolling with the calvary. Anyway, he met a dancer down there - Yara was her name, stunningly beautiful girl, her mother was local Stygian immigrant, he guessed her father was some Hibernian rover - and now she wanted to go north to find her father - the best one always have father issues, don’t they? So that’s why he’s here in the north - it’s always a woman, right? She’s over at the Diamond Spider, makes good gold there. She seemed to think her father was somewhere up in these lands, so here they were”

Gonchar rode with the patrol for a couple weeks, and checked in periodically while Lycovane was identifying items with Tim, and then he heard that Cathal, Seamus and Menka had returned to town, so he returned to meet them…