As you walk through Wizard's Gate and into the city your hopes for some warm food and fire to put the cold out of you are quickly dashed as the first thing you notice is that Silver Unicorn Inn is currently locked. You pass it as well as nearby trading house which - aside from also being empty - looks as if it was ransacked, tools and gear lying in the snow with no sign of crates that should store them. The mystery partially clears when you reach another trading place down the road, the tiefling run House Azaer, where you see a group of six humans and a dwarf dumping contents of any and all storage containers out into the snow and then hacking now empty containers into firewood. Single exception is made for food which is carefully gathered and loaded onto a cart guarded by members of the Fallcrest Guard. One of them notices you looking and silently nods down the road, urging you to move along.
Move along you do and along the way you witness more locked up houses and another local provisions store being guarded by yet more guards, apparently waiting for it's turn of firewood and food gathering. You turn and proceed to the lower docks, where you finally run into population of Fallcrest, gathered around tents set up by a clan of river travelling halflings, trying to rub themselves against the cold or get nearer to one of several bonefires set up in the area, all while continuing to listen. As you push through the crowd to get a clearer view you hear the end of a report by one of the halfling who, raised on shoulders of two guardsmen, describes their travel from the lands to the south. It seems Turnfin clan met the same unnatural winter on their way, and even had to break ice on the river to make it to Fallcrest itself.
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You heard it from Barro Turnfin people! - a balding man in fine furs shouts -
The lands downriver are in the same state as we are. Rationing is the only way. We can outlast this, but we need to conserve and share what we have!- Let each man take care of himself! - a cry comes from the crowd - First you chop up the trade goods, what's going to come afterwards? Our houses?
- You've got more than you need, Armos. If you don't want to share, maybe we should help ourselves! - counters some dwarf
- Armos is right! - a female tiefling whom you recognize as local operator of Hose Azaer says and points at the man in fine furs - You'll pay every copper for my property Lord Warden, or... or...
- Or you'll what tiefling? What
will you do Lord Warden, what
will you do to the man that is trying to feed my family? - says another person - You merchants worry about a few crates lost, few contracts broken and forget about the people who put food on your tables - us, farmers. We lost all our crops, now all we can do is try to keep our families alive, and Warden Markelhay has a plan how to do it.
- Pelor is god of summer and sunlight! We should all pray to Pelor! - calls the dwarven priest of the Sun God
- Nonsense! Erathis is our city's patron god! - responds a human priestess - We took the safety of our lands for granted, we must make sacrifices to Erathis!
Tempers start to run high, with groups of like-minded people starting to form in crowd, each shouting at another, with Lord Markelhay unsuccessfully trying to bring some order to the gathering. The guards start to look nervous, keeping their hands on the weapons while Turnfing halflings scurry through the crowd to their tents.
Berak - as far as you remember some oddities in weather do happen from time to time, but mostly they are either random and short lived or can be traced to changes in local environment. Nothing you can recall resembles the scale and oddity of current winter