An Elusive Antidote (day 1)

The three heroes arrive in Falcon's Hollow, one to aid with the plague, another passing by and deciding to rent his skills in aid, and the last, Tok, afraid that he is himself afflicted.

After a short interaction with the patrons of the local tavern, where Tok is politely but firmly declined service because of his cough, Tok and one of the heroes learn that the local herbalist, Laurel, is aiding the families of the sick as best she can - although her proscriptions are little more than bed rest and a pungent black urdroot tea. The owner of the tavern directed the two heroes to Laurel's shop, the unmistakably named Roots and Remedies. The line stemming from Laurel's shop made a useful first-time meeting place with the last hero.

Creeping ivy and full window boxes cover the façade of the rugged-looking, two-story shop bearing the faded sign “Roots and Remedies”. A line of twenty-some somber townsfolk – some with pale, wheezing children, others seeming to be precipitously near tears – stretched from the open door.

It took nearly an hour for the heroes to reach the door of Roots and Remedies. Once inside, the clutter and disrepair of the shop showed the recent traffic. And Laurel visibly overworked herself at the store's rear, brewing remedies for the ill.

The smell of burnt earth and spicy incense chokes the air of the cramped, mud-tracked shop. Bunches of dried herbs hang from the ceiling, along with dangling pots, presses, alchemical apparatuses, and glassware of more arcane purposes. Pouches of rare plants, jars of colored glass, and all manner of dried, preserved, and jellied animal parts fill high shelves and tables doing double duty as displays and workspaces. In the shop’s rear, a rail-thin woman with severe-looking spectacles and hair pulled back tightly busied herself between an overpacked rack of herbs, a table covered in stray powders and measuring equipment, and a pot loudly bubbling over with thick gray froth. Over the din of her work and without looking up, the woman impatiently shouted, “And what’s your problem?”

The heroes conversed with Laurel and she told them anything they needed to know about the blackscour outbreak, how many people are afflicted, and - especially - how it's not her job to treat every cut and scabbed knee the daft people of Falcon's Hollow come crying to her about.

According to Laurel:

• Blackscour is just a fungus that's not good for anything. Hard, bitter, and sharp, it likes the water and gets people sick if they drink it down. She had never heard of it growing around these parts, though, until now.
• Blackscour taint is a sickness, almost like any other, but the afflicted get the mold growing in them. It starts eating away at their chest and belly and is damned determined to stay. Their body near turns itself inside out trying to hack the stuff up, but all that does is cut their guts up...bad.
• More than thirty townsfolk have blackscour taint, though at least three times that think they've got it.
• There isn't a cure around here. Laurel gets these folks what she can and waits to see what good it does.
• Laurel's grandmother's book has a brew in it that says that it's good for this kind of thing. A weird concoction that sounds more like hoojoo than real medicine.
• This medicine is some rare roots and concentrations, most of which Laurel has here, but there's three she doesn't. Elderwood moss, which she's never heard of, but her grandmother says it only grows on the oldest tree in the forest. A specially pickled root called rat's tail. And seven ironbloom mushrooms, stunty little things that only grow in dark places thick with metal. a favorite among dwarves,
• For the elderwood moss, there's gotta be an oldest tree in the vale. Laurel doesn't know where it is though. The rat's tail and mushrooms are even longer shots. Way north, towards the mountains, people say there used to live a bunch of dwarves. They're not there anymore, but their forges should be. If the heroes can find ironbloom anywhere around here, that would be their best bet. As for the rat's tail, Ulizmila, the witch that lives deep in the woods might know. She's a crafty, mean thing that knows all sorts of strangeness. She might even have one. Laurel doesn't know what Ulizmila might want for it, but Laurel doubts it would come cheap. Her grandmother traded her sight to the old crone for a few pages of what she knew, and that was years and years back, and Laurel doesn't know a soul who got nicer as they got older.
• They have no time to get the ingredients! People are dying every day! All they can hope to do now is treat who they can and hope to save the gravedigger some work.
• Laurel is not doing all this for free. If nothing else, this whole thing has been good for business. If the heroes come back with everything she needs to brew the medicine she will cut them in: 30 gp each.

Laurel suggested the heroes head to the Consortium Lumber Camp to the east and look for Milon Rhoddam - the most experienced woodsman in the Lumber Consortium.