You've just crossed over the high pass when you stop for the night at an inn. It's a sturdy stone and timber building, comfortable and well-appointed, at the junction of three ways. One is the way you came, back south to Medaris. One is the way you are going, northwest to the town of Stanhope, a good-size town where you hope to play. The other…it gives you a strange feeling.
Why should it? It's just a road leading off to the northeast from a place you've never been before.
Or have you? The inn seems strangely familiar, as does the junction of the road. When you helped stable the patient donkeys who draw your wagons, you had the strongest sense of déjà vu in the stables. But that's ridiculous. You're city bred. You've never been over the mountains to the north. You've certainly never been in this inn before nor have any preference about the road.
Still, as everyone is making merry in the common room that evening, you casually ask the barman where that road leads. "Not so much traffic that way as in the old days," he says. "Used to get great caravans, and now it's just the occasional trader. Goes to Pomona, that does. Pomona's just a village now. It was quite a place before the siege."
You know that story. The Raven conquered Pomona a generation ago.