"Well lads, what do you feel like? Getting some sleep or doing some exploring?" Jill asks the others, stifling a yawn.

Like all halflings, Hamfast is a glutton - and he displays far less decorum and table manners than most, delving into the thin meal with evident gusto and not a little debris. His shocking lack of regard for his fellow diners is tempered only by brief pauses - one would think this was just a necessarily break for air, if Hamfast didn't spend these moments glancing uneasily at the windows. Prank or not, it had evidently rattled the town drunkard.

After dinner, he totters up to the rooms with a little less enthusiasm, clearly slowed down by the lateness of the hour. He's still awake enough to keep from immediately stumbling off to his room, though, and at Jill's suggestion, his eyes light up maliciously.

"Tell you what," he begins, brushing crumbs off his shirt with one hand while leaning against the wall with the other. "I got a plan. How about we go find that bumpkin and give him a little scare of his own? Show him we mean business!"

Jill frowns. It wasn't exactly what she meant by exploring, but it would get Hamfast out without much hassle.

"Assuming we can find him in the dark anyway, but I'm in. Let's go have a look around."

You head out, finding that the downpour has turned into a light trickle, barely noticeable except when a particularly large drop falls uncomfortably in your neck. The hooded lanterns you found inside the inn gives off precious little light, creating an island of illumination not ten feet in diameter, behind which the oppressing blackness of the night hungrily waits to envelop you, held back only by the flickering, failing candle in your lanterns.

The town square has been turned into a patch of thick, wet mud, sucking at your feet as if the earth is trying to swallow you whole. Eventually you find your way to the well, which seems to almost materialize from the darkness as your lanterns shed their light on it. Yet of the man who spooked you, there is no trace.

Or so it seems. Looking about, you find two sets of prints- one leading north, the other, south. The tracks are easy to spot in the deep mud, but that same mud's malleable consistency makes it impossible to tell which direction the figure came from, and in which direction he left...

"Damn, and now we're wet and the blighter isn't even here." Jill say's loudly to Hamfast.

She steps around a bit, peering north and south to try and see what lies in either direction, and what looks like a place someone would head to.

"Should we split up? If we find the bloke we can run back and meet up again."