<congrats >
Seeing that Drek was lost in thought, Prosper had climbed to the top of the barn. He walked to the place he had seen the Drow. He looked closely in the thatch. Nothing. He cursed, he thought he'd find something!
Sighing in frustration, he looked down to where the rest of the company was standing. He stoped short. A glint. There in the mud where the dark elf had landed. He scrambled down the barn and went to the glint.
Reaching into the mud, he pulled out a gold ring with a very large,smooth,pitch black stone on it. Etched on the stone was what looked like a mountain with lines coming out the top of the cone. At the base was a symbol he didn't understand. Maybe Drek or the mage, Michel, wasn't it?, would be able to.
He ran to Farnaham. "Sah! Look wot I've found!"

Drek followed Prosper to where he had found the ring. "May I see that, Farnham?" he asked. He closely examined the ring's inscription. "Well, all I can tell you is that this is definately the ring of a Drow. They love onyx, and the writing on the base confirms it. I'm sorry to say I don't know what it means, perhaps we should ask Michael."

Marcus followed Prosper to the barn. He tried to bust the door open with his tough fists and strong arms.

{}{}{: Stong as an ox, eh? XD :}{}{}

Acedia took the ring and examined it, ignoring the onyx set in the top and carefully examining the band, especially the outer side. She was looking for the Burcet twins' trademark - they did make rings, occasionally, but a ring was too difficult to infuse with some kind of power, so only if they had correspondence with a gem cutter would they fill an order for a ring, as most people opt for a stone of some sort, rather than an unadorned band.

The mark Acedia was looking for looked sort of like a cross between a compass rose and a blazing sun, with a crescent moon blocking almost the entire left half of the sun's face.There was a largish B in the center of this emblem, with a small L below and to the left of it, and a small S above and to the right. The north point of the compass pointed to the letters 'AU', south to 'AG', east to 'CU' and west to 'FE.' The design was usually stamped onto their work - for a ring, it would be on the outside at the bottom, and very small. Sometimes they would forego the compass rose bit and simply use the 'L B S' part of the emblem. Occasionally they would get very lazy and put only a calligraphic B.

At any rate, Acedia couldn't find the mark she was looking for, though the way the stone was mounted in the ring suggested a few alterations had been made by the gemsmith that had done it. Mostly involving a crude hammer. "Would it be feasible, or advisable, to try and remove the stone?" she asked Maxwell, whom I assume is still concerned with the ring and not by the barn, because he was trained as a gemsmith after all and should probably know about such things.

{}{}{: see the emblem: clicky :}{}{}

Meanwhile Tem had just noticed the horse's lack of shoes."Hmmm..."he said, "Well girl, my previous horse left me these in an emergency"He pulled out 4 good horseshoes, and fitted them on the horse. "There we go."he said,"Now let's pull out"He galoped in the direction of a shaman tent in the distance.

{}{}{: Yeah, I made the emblem. Thanks for the compliments. I'll be going on vacation in about a week and a half, so I've still got time to come up with some kind of excuse as to why Acedia falls silent for three or four days. XD; :}{}{}

"If this ring is magic, the metalsmith's trademark will be under the gem," Acedia said. "It's a kind of insurance for the metalsmith, as he usually doesn't do the enchantment. Therefore, rather than devalue the ring by separating gem and band to see who crafted what, you leave the ring whole and the smiths sleep peacefully. The reasoning behind this is that most clients who want a magic ring are greedy by nature - that, and removing the gem also affects the ring's power. The non-avaricious who desire magic rings want frivolous magic - a gem that shows them their lover's face, for instance - or practical magic, such as a gem that provides them with a map wherever they are, rather than any real power.

"Alternatively, if the ring is not magic in terms of providing for the wearer, then the trademark will either be visible on the band without removing the gem, which it is not, or it will be visible on the band only while wearing the ring - which is a test that I'm not entirely comfortable administering myself." Apparently, Acedia and these Burcet twins were fairly good friends, since all this was knowledge that was usually confined to practitioners of metalsmithing. "If I'm correct, and this is a Burcet Twins piece, then under the gem should be this trademark." She took a random medallion out of her pocket. It happened to be the Peregrine falcon medallion, and had an engraving of said bird in flight on one side. Stamped on the other was that compass rose emblem. She showed the emblem side.

Marcus suddenly picked up an odd new scent. It was like a mix of a bad-smelling Dwarf and a bad-smelling Mage.

"Someone was up here! I can't figure out the smell. Never smelled this before." Marcus called for Tem. "Mr. Squiddly Psychic Man! Can you figure out who was up here?"