Horned trader

The horned trader is an unnamed dealer in rare goods of the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, met in White City; his horns and looks set him apart from the people around him. He makes his living travelling to find precious things and bringing them to buyers.¹

The way to him

Kemp Corvus, Sarah and Ephorus were looking for materials for the dwarven rune master, among them a feather. The gambler Lotus gave them the card of an establishment with a horseman's sign, where a halfling cook named Bingo brokered rare ingredients and some forbidden stimulants. The cook told them that the feather's owner mostly wanted a job done rather than money; he had once set another group to frighten a moneylender. Before meeting the trader, the companions called on a mage they trusted, who earned his living by teleportation and divination and kept his own circle hidden, to arrange for him to test the feather's worth once they had it.^{2 3 4 5}

His trade and his trouble

The cook brought the trader to a quiet place away from the crowd. He believes that his magic lets him pass unseen between worlds, take things from under others' noses and return, and that for the right price he could bring goods even from the nine hells. A man was trying to kill him, he said, because he had sold a remedy that man needed for a member of his family to another customer who paid more. In return for the feather he wanted that trouble dealt with. When he opened what looked like a plain door or wall, a glowing passage appeared beyond it.^{6 7 8 9}

When the companions came to his heavily locked house the next day, he served them tea and explained. The man pursuing him was an old hunter, white-haired, with a scar on his face like a devil's claw, who had wanted the material for his grandchild. The trader had had several bottles of it, and a wealthy customer had bought them all at a high price on condition of taking all or none. He said he had taken it from a holy place, that it was not really a medicine but a very rare and potent material, and that he had never thought the rich buyer might have any link with the hunter.^{10 11 12 13 14}

At an open-air show he went to collect the rest of a fee from a performer whose voice, lost to drink, he had earlier restored with a magical substance; one of the companions played the menacing guard, lifting a chair to make the point.^{15 16}

The hunter

Guarding him, the companions rode out with him by carriage, faces changed by magic. On the way back the driver turned out to have been replaced by the Scarred old hunter, who stopped the carriage, threw him a purse for the bottles and demanded the buyer's name. The trader at first refused out of fear, but in the end gave the name and drove away.^{17 18 19 20}