"Yeah, I'm all for it! We can collect candlewax while we're at it, neither of us is stealthy enough to scout without getting attacked if there are kobolds in - " she should know this one, she lives here, heck, why are the names of things so hard to hold onto - "in Jasperlode. Carefully, though, I unwisely went blindly kobold-hunting in the dark day before yesterday and got swarmed and it was not a great time." 

"I've been practicing my frostbolts."

"Oooh, frostbolts. That seems highly relevant to this application." 

Then they can head out on the road! Going, uh, ..... long pause to squint at the shadows and mentally plod through the process it's past noon so the sun is in the west so the shadows point east ...... that way. 

Wait, Azeroth does use the compass directions the same way Earth does, right, where if somebody says 'east' that in fact means 'in the direction of the sunrise'? 

Diane doesn't object to their course, so probably!

Before they get all the way out of town, a shady figure leans out from behind a building.

"Psst! Hey, you two!"

Oh dear. She is 0% qualified for cloak and dagger anything. Whenever she tries to participate in non-tabletop games less straightforward than "go to this spot and hit someone" she mysteriously fails some basic interaction and gets ignored. 

Nevertheless: "Hi, how can I help you?" she says automatically. 

"Name's Remy. You're going after kobolds, right? Well, if you find any gold dust on any of them, I'll pay fair coin for it."

Okay, that seems in fact exactly that straightforward. Cool. "Yeah, sure." As she writes down 7. gold dust for Remy (kobolds), she wonders, "What does one do with gold dust, anyway, it's no good for building stuff. Cool art projects I guess?" They are ... probably not using it for cutting-edge chemistry experiments? Although who knows, with legit alchemists around. 

Remy squints in suspicion. "I'm just a middleman here. Questions ain't always conducive to good health."

"Sure, sure," she shrugs, "no offense meant, none of my business, just curious. Fetch gold dust, receive money, no questions." Nod.

She contemplates adding a disclaimer about how the generic right to personal privacy does not prevent it becoming Paladin Business if there is murder involved, but decides against, on the grounds that it would honestly be super weird to be committing murders with gold dust. It's not even poisonous. 

"Right then. Find me when you have something. I'll be around." He slinks back into the shadows.

"That was weird," Theri remarks to Diane once they've successfully left town. "I mean, I don't mind doing it, we're going that way anyway, but what could somebody possibly need Remy to fence art supplies for that they can't just stick a bounty notice on the board themselves, evil illuminated scrolls? Evil ... gold leaf pastries? Maybe the pastries aren't evil but they're just really embarrassed about their hobby??"  

"Maybe they just don't want to get taxed?"

Oh right, taxes are not remotely a new technology even though in the future they're mostly done electronically. "Ah, yeah, that makes more sense than evil pastries." 

It's a ways along the path before they need to turn off into the woods to head toward the mine. With any luck she'll eventually stop expecting to find a cell phone in her pocket that can tell her her precise location on a map via GPS. 

Is the landmark where she is supposed to turn north really visually obvious or is she going to walk right past it? 

The Tower of Azora is fairly unmissable, yes.

Good, good. (The weird thing about not recognizing the name is that she's not actually sure if she's just incredibly unobservant or it got Cataclysmed.) 

Northward they go! 

They encounter a few roaming boars and wolves once they cut off the main road. One of the boars coughs up a couple coins in its death rattle.

"Huh," says Theri, examining a coin with interest once she's wiped them clean(ish) on the grass and tossed half of them to Diane. "I guess it ate somebody recently. That's sort of vaguely horrifying." She has the vague sense that if she was video gaming right now she would be 'looting' meat off the animals for cooking, but she is really not at this time feeling up to trying to gut and skin and carve a recently-live animal and also then she would have to put ... raw meat ... in her backpack ...

Is the Jasperlode Mine, as the Marshal suspected, full of kobolds? 

There are more kobolds on the outside of the mine than on the inside. On the inside of the mine there are mostly giant spiders instead.

(Giant is perhaps the wrong term. In comparison to normal spiders, these are more on a Titanic scale.)

Well that is a whole entire barrel of yikes.  

"You know," says Theri partway through this incredibly stressful activity, vibrating slightly with anxiety and really appreciating the periodic enforced breaks inherent in having a mage around, "if you had asked me yesterday if I was particularly uncomfortable with spiders, I'd've been like 'nah, spiders are our friends, they eat mosquitoes and stuff', but it turns out that giant spiders is an option and I am not here for that." 

"I dunno," Diane says thoughtfully. "It's a lot harder for them to sneak up on you when they're the size of a sheep. And the crunching sound when you break them is kind of nice."

"You make a compelling point," she admits. "I suppose spider horribleness is not linear with size. Still, though. The teeth and the eyes and," shudder. 

Diane laughs. "I read somewhere that you can make, like, a jelly spread out of giant spider eyes. Good on toast."

"What an incredibly neat and yet horrifying concept." Theri nudges a dead spider's face very dubiously with her boot. "I mean I know big spiders aren't usually venomous or poisonous, but..." 

Is it spiders all the way down? 

Yes, yes it is.

At the very bottom of the mine is the biggest mama spider, as wide as two horses and surrounded by desiccated web-wrapped husks.