Organisation is the backbone of civilisation.~From the graduation thesis of Bernin

Bernin loved labels. The last few weeks though, she had been getting her fill and more. Haspal had labelled the boxes, what she hadn’t realised until halfway through was that some boxes contained smaller boxes which were then labelled with the subsection of the item of the larger box. It was beautifully organised, but making notes in her own book was getting more and more annoying.

It was the final day of inventory. She had two boxes left to go and based on her tempo she would be finished somewhere around lunch. She thought about it and decided to work through lunch and end early. She would have to go back to the inn anyway for review, might as well make it into a working lunch. The last few days she had adjusted the last of her spells to the surrounding field. She wasn’t fully comfortable yet, but she was at least 80% strength or so she thought.

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Back in the inn, Bernin sat down with her notebook. It had been growing steadily heavier, keeping up with her notes and had taken a lot more paper than she had originally thought. Her book kept up with her though, she really loved her notebook. Wherever the final page was written on, a new page would begin to grow. It didn’t take that long and she had rarely had to take a break from writing. She had gotten it as a gift years ago and had used it liberally ever since. It was a lot better than the tens of smaller journals she had gone through in her youth.

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The food wasn’t bad. Bread rarely was, especially if the population had been living there for a while. Sometimes you have some insane baker that tries to innovate a bit too hard in the other direction. It was nice to eat something like cherry bread once in a while, but eating it day in and day out really only caused you to despise everything cherry. It was one of the reasons Bernin couldn’t stomach leeks any more. Truly, the villagers who happily ate leek bread day in and out had to be influenced by something, even if Bernin could prove it.

She was putting off her conclusions. She had done most of the preparation a while ago, it was a necessity doing her job. It simply took so long that note taking and making smaller summaries was required. At Least for anyone who wished to remain sane. She had noticed the discrepancies a while ago, but had not quite put her finger on it, until she saw the storeroom. Haspal was an excellent mage and an even better druid. So why was he buying the same seeds every year? That question had sent her down the path and what she found shocked her. Haspal had bought large stores of staple foods: barley, wheat, corn and various grass seeds. The exact food staples that were prevalent in the valley. It was obvious where the seeds had really gone. She just didn’t understand it. Towns were equipped with everything they could need and shipments could be bought for relatively low prices. So why did this happen?

There was no other way about it, she would have to confront Haspal. She just hoped he was a talker. She would rather not have to fight a full druid in his own tower.