The Amberpine Lodge was an outpost in the Grizzly Hills region of Northrend. Once a base of operations for hunters and trappers, it had been commandeered for military use by the Alliance. Jon had arrived on the back of a griffon from Valiance Keep, and had immediately begun questioning the staff, talking with the charming redheaded Innkeeper, Jennifer Bell. While Bell had professed to not have seen her, she had rented Jon a room for the night.
The next day, Jon questioned the Amberpine Lodge staff, but nobody had professed to have seen her. Later that day, Jon had encountered a woman in the Amberpine Lodge common room while eating lunch, and he had grinned. Rising from his table, he had approached the woman from her blind spot and had the cruel satisfaction of seeing her jump a little when he had cleared his throat behind her.
"A little far from your home, aren't you, Miss Reynolds?" he had said, his usual insolent grin on his face.
She had turned, and reached for her knives but relaxed when she recognized Jon. "Jonny, how good to see - such an unexpected pleasure!' She paused before continuing. "It is unexpected, yes? You aren't looking for me, perchance?" she added nervously.
Jon chuckled. "I swear by the Uncrowned we both serve, I was not looking for you... but I am looking for someone... perhaps you might have seen her?" replied Jon, describing Macee Welch. "She's supposed to be in the area." The lady he knew as Saffron Reynolds - and he also knew that was not her true name - was a merchant in the kind of herbs folks like Jon used for pest control, whether the two or four-legged variety.
"Well, I don't know whether or not it was her you are looking for," informed the seller of poison supplies. "But there was a woman who was paying off the staff not to remember her, should anyone come looking." Saffron grinned. "She was headed off to the Drakil'jin Ruins, south of Thor Modan." The Drakil'jin Ruins was mostly a burial ground of the ancient ice troll Drakkari Empire, one of the largest troll nations ever to have existed in Ancient Kalimbor before the Sundering.
"I appreciate the information, Saff..." Jon said, grinning. "And it was a pleasure not seeing you again!" Jon paid his score at the lodge and stepped outside to the deck overseeing the river below. Mumbling an ancient Arokkoa cantrip, he summoned a Shadow Raven and headed for Thor Modan.
* * * * *
"Miss Macee Welch?" Jon asked the Wogen woman standing in the midst of five rapidly-cooling corpses.
"Who wants to know?" the Worgen snarled. Jon had arrived in time to see her successfully conclude her encounter with the ice troll priests who guarded the tombs of the Drakil'jin Ruins.
"My name is Chess. Jon Chess," he said, offering his new business cards proclaiming him to be a Private Investigator based in the Curious Octopus Inn in Boralus. "I was sent to find you by Kaneka Hillyard, and to make sure you hadn't managed to get yourself killed..." Jon looked pointedly at the ice troll corpses"... as opposed to visa versa."
Jon recruited her for teh Brotherhood of Valor Scouts division that afternoon.
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