Quoted By:
One of the 625th Chemhounds, rustling across the landscape in a light cloak, makes it back to Lutatius and delivers a somewhat . . . confused report.
There is a House checkpoint up ahead, before Howlhammer. Of course there would be, this is House Cesteripherion lands, so their distant family council do keep some people around to watch the roads. Bit of a queue forming. They're checking people going into and out of Howlhammer, for access passes and all.
Right, but that's not it, the thing is, the *thing is*, right, sir, this checkpoint, it has a lot of wagons held in a small guarded area to the back. He watched them for a while, and they let a few carts of turnips through fine, but they held up what was *definitively* a Fideli delivery of new arrows and extra boots to Windchime, took over for the teamsters and that wagon is now kept behind them.
None of this is explicit unusual. Cesteriphon could want to guard the convoy for later delivery by those troops manning the checkpoint. Standard practice, after all, and it lets the teamsters from Fideli begin their long journey back to the Gates earlier. And Cesteripheron is as loyal as Houses come, which is to say, they're dogs barely worthy of the name of a House, deserving only of scorn, thirdrate AT BEST and fools on top of it, but at least they're not Sparkies, and, look, no bones about it, Cerco does good business, but everyone owns Cesteriphon-stamped shirts somewhere.
( The briefing breaks down into booing about admitting to that clear lack of House loyalty, though its all somewhat undercut later when you break for eating rations, which have been proudly prepared and shipped to the front by Cesteriphon, the foremost agricultural merchant-cartel in the Pytherii Republic )
Only. . . That Rebus Pathfinder section what showed up and said they'd arrange a courier transport of our captive Sparksworn, right?
They didn't mention a checkpoint. Which is odd. Because they're Pathfinders, *sir*. They've straight mentioned everything else on this road so far. How'd they miss a checkpoint? They couldn't have.
So it must be a recent one.
>Lutatius scout patrol comes to a halt. Little sense in aggravating a distant different House if you're out of march order, they could order you to take a long way around on account of "paper work". Or double-check your passes for forgeries.
>Orders, sir? [Admin]
>To be clear, anyone can offer an opinion here, couriers will handle all the letter sending
---
**Evaluation**
Given the density of enemy horse patrols north of the river, and the lack of attacks or dead allies south of the river, we can conclude that most of the Sparksworn seem concentrated north-northwest and west. Perhaps closer to Glimini, or perhaps they're holed up in Howlhammer.
There is a Cesteriphon Tollstation on the road to Glimini. It is abandoned at this time.
