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Little Cradle

Trader Town • Last Stop Before the Capital • Home of the Little Soup

Overview​

Little Cradle is a trader's marketplace town just outside the capital, Eldoran — the last stop on the road before the city. It stocks everything the capital will not allow inside its walls, including drugs, firearms and armaments, and it is crowded with mercenary companies kitting up for jobs. The party stopped there in Sessions 54–55 on the way into the Eldoran Empire, meeting their escort, Finnegan, and preparing for Lord Bradicus's mercenary audition before riding up to the capital.

The Little Soup and the Little Spoon​

At the center of town stands a brutalist tower about twenty stories tall. At its base is the Little Soup, an old-fashioned pub and restaurant in the style of an Irish pub, with a swinging wooden sign showing a small bowl of soup; the inn above it, the Little Spoon, is signed midway up the tower. Finnegan kept room 1012, ten flights up. The inn also has a small gym, and serves a continental breakfast to its guests (Sessions 54–55).

The Eldoran officer at the checkpoint on the road in offered to introduce the party to Paul, a military recruiter who takes sign-ups at a desk by the town's church after the morning service; the party resolved never to find him (Session 54).

The Party in Little Cradle​

Arrival (Session 54). Posing as the deliberately unimpressive mercenary company "Pupusa Possum," the party passed the Eldoran checkpoint on the road in, with Silas at the wheel and the pocket village capsule disguised. At the Little Soup, Leliana got Finnegan's room number from the bartender and the party climbed ten flights to meet him in person for the first time. He laid out the job: win Lord Bradicus's contract to gain free movement in the capital, while he smuggled in the materials for bombs aimed at five sites in the city. Olivia pressured him into handing over George's sending stone. The party threw a rager in the pub that night, among rival mercenary crews that included a pink-dyed, sword-carrying crew of cats.

The continental breakfast (Session 55). To win the audition without looking too capable, the party spiked the inn's breakfast with Marvin's memory-wiping brew. Before dawn Olivia, working out in the inn's gym, met the card crew's leader — a second Paul, not the recruiter — and improvised the cover name "Becca Benson." Then Silas, made invisible by Leliana, dosed the most dangerous member of each rival crew — the card crew's leaders Paul and Jesse, the cats' saucers of milk, and a whole crew of operatic fops — plus a scattering of harmless others to hide the pattern; only a biker gang, eating granola bars, walked past untouched. By the time the caravan left for the capital, half the field was too drunk to stand.

Session History​

  • Session 54 — The party reaches Little Cradle as "Pupusa Possum," meets Finnegan in room 1012 above the Little Soup, takes George's sending stone, and throws a rager in the pub.
  • Session 55 — Silas spikes the inn's continental breakfast to cripple the rival mercenary crews before the party rides up to the capital for the audition.