Small Gaétan puffs as he forces his diminished step to keep up with your party's ambling pace. He's leery of Schlapp - not surprising, as the juvenile giant wolf is a threat to him far beyond even what such beasts are to normal men. But with the wolf padding on the other side of Wighard, the little man is free engage with you all, giving his best efforts to be conversational though he is clearly not widely travelled enough to have much in the way of worldly experiences to share. He knows little of Sigmar, but is interested to hear about Sigmarland; he knows little of Bretonnia even beyond Mousillon, though the faces on the coins make it clear that there is a king, and the nation's legacy of knights and valor is tarnished but still known here. Of Tilea, he has a little more to say.

"Ah - Tilealand? I know some Tileamen from Tilealand. Many of the Sang'Argent gangfellows are Tileamen, under old Lanfranco, eheh. All tallfellows, though; not like us, ahah!" He reaches as if to rap his little fist on Gimgroth's shoulder, glancing back at Jasmine for some kind of solidarity between the short, but he bails short of contact and offers and apologetic, bashful smile as he gets to answering Wighard's question instead.

Spoiler: Gimgroth
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You've heard of Lanfranco. Sartosans are bloody parasites in the eyes of most Tileas, and Lanfranco is the name of a pirate who must by now be in his greying human years. He is know to you because he is one of those pirates who has self-validated sense of gallantry and romanticism about raiding and plundering, sufficiently that he and the crew of the Damoiselle Vert (a Bretonnian ship of war that Lanfranco's men seized in a daring night invasion by rowboat off the coast of Bilbali) were able to sell their services as a mercenary gang from time to time. This made them less odious than most pirates, but it did create the suspicion that however crafty he was, he was not vicious enough, or perhaps just not skilled enough, to make break open a fortune as a pirate. He his retirement took him to Mousillon, and not anywhere more pleasant in the world, the rumors may be right.

You were once on the same battlefield as Lanfranco, though you never had occasion to exchange words. (You can decide the circumstances of that battle, if you and Lanfranco's pirates were on the same side or opposing, and so forth. No rush for that memory; it may come up later!)


"Well, that's a story, my lordfellows; and both is true. My mother'll have me here, but she'll take me away to village Puanteure. She will die when I am still young, and I'm making a penny playing flute sometimes; but rogues come to Puanteure, and throw many of the children in bags, and scoop me up also. But when they'll let me out of the bag days after, I'll be on the docks in Mousillon and they are selling one and all to the Arabymen. But they'll look at me, and say, 'Ah, not this one, he is too small!' and they will throw me into the water. But as the gods will have, I'll land in a tangled mat of river weed, and instead of sinking, I'll be there until after the Arabymen ship will've sailed and a pair of ragged goodfellows pull me out of the water. They'll say, 'Small Gaétan, we save your life, you must learn to be a thief like us', and they will've taken pity on a boy and I'll say to do it. And three days later, they will pick a house to rob, and they will say "Small Gaétan, stay here on the street and if the master of the house is coming home, you holler and we shall flee." But as the gods will have, the master will be home already, and he will be the pit fighter Rolf the Wolf, and he will beat the lives out of them and dump them on the street corner, and give me a piece of silver to tell the cartfellows to come get them. And I'll have been here ever since!"

The anecdote is jarring, though you've heard it before in your travels in Bretonnia - a lower class quirk in the way past stories are told, the narrative future tense, which is just one more reason Imperials and Bretonnians find each other difficult to comprehend.

As for the medical examination, the little fellow nods along at Wighard's offer - the promise of paid work of almost any kind, however odd, is appealing to him; though he doesn't seem to understand why this is a paid service, and is afraid to blow his good fortune by questioning it.

As the companions approach the bridge and power of the smell invades your nostils, your attention is drawn to a spectacle being made by a mob to one side of the street. A man in rags is hauled out of a crumbling tenement, tied to a convenient post, and flogged by a a dozen men, women and children wielding an assortment of sticks, belts, and knotted ropes.

"More creeping things seen in the night, I think," Small Gaétan explains as he urges you to pass by and not interfere. "Some people think they are attracted to evil thoughts, so when they are seen creeping around a house, this happens... Poorfellow."

Spoiler: OOC: If you passed your Perception Check before...
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...Even these distractions are not enough for you to fail to notice, from the angle of your approach to the rickety crossing coming up, that there are wooden pegs and handholds along the wides and under the 'bridge'. Presumably, these are used to hide the numbers of criminals trying to waylay people crossing the bridge and strongarm them for money, permitting a superior number of opponents to quickly scramble up top and even the odds. You see only a pair of scruffy young toughs on the bridge right now anticipating your approach, but there are likely quite a few more under the bridge waiting for a signal.

Spoiler: OOC: Gimgroth, for succeeding quite so well:
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There's also something else - far on the other side of the bridge, in what is formally called the Bridge District where the dilapidation of the city as at its least terrible, there is a three story building with a pronounced sag to one side, causing it to slouch into its neighbour that in turn slouches to another. But in the window of the second floor of that building, you make out a humanoid figure shifting ever so slightly and watching the happenings on the other side of the river; and presumably watching those who cross.