It took quite a long time for the professor to outline the job he wanted Terri to do, as well as the reasons why it was a good idea. In the end Terri told the mysterious academic that she'd consider the offer and left the office deep in thought. Dawn was breaking as the young cleric opened the door to Aggy's house and walked inside. She was in no way prepared for what awaited her.

Aggy had been sitting on the couch fretting, and catapulted herself across the room as soon the door opened, with Flem following close behind. She wrapped a startled Terri in a fierce bear hug that lifted her off the ground. Flem quickly joined in and when her two friends finally let Terri go, the young cleric saw that they both had tears in their eyes. Flem started to mumble an apology but choked up when Terri put a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't think twice about it Flem, I did exactly the same thing to Thisss with the sheep task remember? We all know the risks we're taking when we go out on a job, it was no one's fault, just part and parcel of being a member of Gravenhall."

Flem nodded solemnly and wiped his eyes but it was Aggy who spoke first.

"There is no way, young cleric, no way in all of the heavens or any of the hells that I am going to let you go out on any more adventures. Flem, Thisss and I will go as a trio and you can just sit here quietly and try not to move. Don't even go out to the privy if you think there might be danger, I'll put a wee bucket in the corner that you can use instead."

Flem didn't seem particularly keen on the last part of that idea but he once again nodded solemnly.

"That's a.....ah.....lovely sentiment Aggy," Terri said while trying to hide her smile, "but how about we try for a compromise? I'll promise to always let you go first when the fighting starts and you'll promise to get in the way of anything deadly that's hurtling in my direction. How does that sound?"

"Not nearly good enough," Aggy replied, "but I'll have a think about it. Maybe I can come up with some kind of magical armour, or perhaps just a huge ball of cotton wool. Now, sit down and tell us the story of your miraculous survival while I make some breakfast."

Terri sat down at the kitchen table and recounted the events of the past few hours, including the details of her conversation with the professor. She emphasised several times that the information she was providing was undoubtedly top secret, and that just by having this conversation they were putting themselves in danger. After the third time Terri did this Aggy held up her hand.

"All right lass, we get the picture. Neither of us are going to breathe a word of anything we've heard here tonight, you're not talking with a couple of dafties you know. Now, tell us about the job this 'professor' has for you."

"Well that's the funny thing," Terri replied, "The job's actually for Flem, but we're both supposed to go along too."

Flem looked up, surprised. "A job for me? Why not just come to me directly?"

"I asked him the same question," Terri responded. "He said that it mostly came down to a question of trust. Apart from a few old friends in each of the guilds, he's now unsure of who's become part of the infiltration and who hasn't. For that reason he limits his 'agents', as he called them, to low level clerics of Avandar. He said that we're extremely low risk because of both our morality and our low status. After all, if you were an infiltrator why would you compromise someone who's level one when you could turn someone else who's level ten, or higher? He said that another one of his agents had informed him of the death of a tailor in Valleros and that they thought it might be linked to the infiltration. He wanted to send me to investigate in a way that wouldn't arouse too much suspicion so he asked his friend in the rogues' guild to make Flem an offer he couldn't refuse; the opportunity to find his father's killers."

Terri turned to look at the young elf, "You can expect to be summoned to the rogues' guild later on today so that they can give you the job."

Flem's mouth dropped open in response but it was Aggy who replied. "And because we won't be happy for Flem to go alone it means that we'll be going on the mission as well."

Terri nodded. "The professor also likes to load the dice in his favour as much as possible, which is why our payment for this mission will be enough tokens to afford our level two tuition."

Flem gave a low whistle. "So he wants to massively over pay me for doing a task that I would have taken on for free. I'd have to be a fool to refuse."

"Aye, and we'll all be fools when we accept," Aggy growled as she brought a round of toast to the table. "There's an awful lot of unknowns tied up in this task and I have no doubt they'll come back to bite us in the ass like a gigantic, poisonous, black spider. A question I'd like answered is this - how did he know you'd been able to take the ring off the skeleton's finger at all? Was he spying on you during the task or did he over hear our conversation in the initiates' mess hall?"

"Both," replied Terri. "I'd forgotten, but I asked him that question as well. He said that he was spying on me from the graveyard during the task but couldn't be sure if I'd taken the ring so he monitored my conversations throughout the next day."

"And exactly how did he do this 'monitoring'," Aggy asked.

"He wouldn't tell me," Terri replied. "He just said that there were numerous ways to overhear conversations within the walls of Gravenhall, some magical and some mundane. He also told me that if I hadn't spoken to anyone about what happened his backup plan was to approach me as Professor Nomenclature and trick me into telling him. He really was awfully keen to get his hands on that ring although he wouldn't tell me why."

"This plot is getting thicker than my leg hair on the first day of summer," Aggy growled, "I knew there was something fishy about Gravenhall."

"It certainly seems that way," Terri said smiling. "Which brings me to a question of my own, how much do either of you know about its origins?"

Flem shook his head, "Not very much at all I'm afraid, Valleros is a long way from Gravenhall and all we really know about it is that you can come here and train for free."

Aggy was a bit more helpful. "We dwarves are a bit insular as a race and try not to pay any more attention to the outside world than we have to, but we were here when the first humans and elves arrived and when Gravenhall was started, so I know the basic story. Why do you ask?"

"I'm not sure that I have a good reason really," Terri said, frowning. "I just got a sense that the professor thought the roots of the infiltration were somehow tied to Gravenhall's past."

"Well I'll tell you what I know then," Aggy responded. "This tale starts about one hundred and fifty years ago, before any of you bigguns had yet arrived in this part of the world. We dwarves had been here for centuries though, holed up in the colourfully named 'Dragon's Teeth', the range of mountains that borders the sea on the western side of the land mass we're now standing on.

"We were happy enough according to the history I was told, mining our way into the mountains and living mostly off fungi, although we still had a few 'outside farms' between the mountains and the sea. Back in those days the lands on the eastern side of the mountains, where we are now, were a bit of a 'no go' zone. Groups of heavily armed dwarves would sometimes come out here for adventure but mostly we just ignored this land as it was the domain of monsters."

Aggy smiled at the surprised expressions of her companions, and then continued. "Oh yes, only a century and a half ago all this land belonged to the trolls, minotaurs, harpies and myriad other monstrous races. There were a few areas of 'civilisation' as you might call it, the lizardpeople I guess, and a tribe of vaguely sensible goblins we used to trade with, but mostly it was pure chaos. The 'wild east' was what we used to call it, so when a fleet of elves and humans came out of the western sea looking for a place to live, the dwarves were more than happy to point them over here with a cheery 'good luck' and a wry smile.

"We didn't think you had much chance of making it through the first week, let alone one hundred and fifty years but you bigguns are a resourceful bunch. The first decade or so was pretty rough, the settlers stuck close to our mountains for a bit of protection and built a lot of little walled villages that mostly kept the beasties out. It was after that consolidation that they sent a large group out east to found the town of Valleros before coming down here to establish Providence and Gravenhall. Our dwarven histories don't mention its existence until about one hundred years ago but I imagine it was around in some form or another well before then. You see your ancestors had been working on a plan while they were sheltering beside our mountains. They came up with the idea of specially trained, four person teams of adventurers who would earn their keep by 'making the countryside safe' for ordinary folk. And by 'making the countryside safe' they mostly meant 'killing a whole lot of dangerous beasties'."

Terri and Flem sat silently, both a little stunned to learn so much about their history in such a short time. After a while Terri opened her mouth to speak but Aggy held up her hand. "Let me guess lass, you're about to ask why you've never heard of this before, why your races aren't trumpeting from the treetops the story of how they 'tamed the east' and made it safe for decent folk to live in. Well, the reason is that it wasn't exactly a glorious campaign where pure hearted good triumphs over black hearted evil. Those early groups routed out everything that wasn't human or elven, and I mean everything. It didn't matter whether the creatures were threatening settlements or not, they were all hunted down in a way that by today's standards seems a bit......excessive. So nobody really likes to talk about it now. The beasties were largely exterminated or they fled east, away from the invaders. All that remain now are remnants of an earlier time, like our spider, or creatures returning to a land that was once theirs, like the goblins."