Find the Way

Laramie leads the party into the trees on the western shore. He will lead you up into the hills with confidence as if following a well-marked trail, although nothing seems to be distinguishable to any of you. Eric will lag behind everyone, guarding the rear from attack. While leading you into the hills, Laramie remains silent. He will continue on silently until dusk, leading you deep into the woods, and high up above the river below. If anyone questions him during the journey, he will occasionally respond in short quips, but generally will ignore the questions and comments.
Eric, on the other hand, will reply almost automatically to anything spoken to Laramie, as if he were being spoken to directly. It is a well-conditioned state that has developed from the two of them adventuring over the years. Unnerving at first, it takes on a natural rhythm after even a short conversation.
As the light begins to fade, Laramie will turn and speak directly to the rest of the party. "We will need to camp nearby for the night. There is a small cave I know off the main trail that will just hold us all. Before the light is gone, we will make our way there. We should gather any fallen limbs we can as we go to use for a fire. There is not much to fear around here this time of year, but the bears are active at night, especially with this many new scents in the air. They may keep their distance, but we will need to be on guard."
With that, he turned and began leading them away from the "trail" he had been following toward a ridge several hundred yards away from the open hillside. The brush becomes difficult to move through, but with some determination, you are able to find your way to a small clearing and a partially concealed cave entrance part way up the ridge. Eric quickly ushers you all forward to the cave to settle in and unpack your supplies for the night, while Laramie takes the discarded firewood and begins setting a fire just in front of the entrance. Wilderness DC16 will notice signs of former fire pits and previous camping setups. This is a spot that has been used many times for the same purpose as tonight. There is a certain reassurance in this.
After the evening meal has been prepared and everyone settled for the night ahead, Laramie will open up at the campfire. If no one begins questioning him or speaking with him, he will speak softly of his own accord about the unveiling of Lathander's light. Something to the effect of "these times are dark, as many have foretold. But soon the day of the great unveiling will be at hand, and the light of a new dawn will shine on the north and warm its icy heart."
That ought to begin the conversation. At this stage, off the trail, fed, warm and prepared for the night, Laramie is more than willing to talk. He will answer carefully and thoughtfully, but without reservation. His earlier brusqueness was due to his concentration on tracking and following the trail.
Laramie's backstory is that of many refugees. A victim of tribal wars and his mixed race, he was cast aside by the society he was born into. Seeking to put it behind him, he went into the world to win renown as an adventurer. Over the years, he found his success and a certain stature, but felt haunted by a past that only stirred itself in his nightmares. He was fortunate in that he had never known any real terrors or atrocities as a young child, but the destitution of growing up on the streets continued to bother him.
One year, after a particularly brutal encounter that crushed half of his party, and left the remaining members struggling back toward town at night with dead bodies in tow, he became separated from them in a storm. Wandering for days he got completely lost in the mountains, until he stumbled into a burned out farmstead. Nearly famished, and beginning to hallucinate, he had still recognized the signs of a battle recently, and searched for survivors. He found one, bleeding and near death, lying in the road next to a burned wagon. He helped the man back into the house, and scavenged whatever foodstuffs and medicinal herbs he could find to nurse himself and the farmer back to full health.
After several days that turned into weeks when the victim recovered to find his caregiver at the brink of collapse from caring for him, the tables turned and the old farmer nursed Laramie back to health.
As it turned out, the old man was a cleric of Lathander who had retired to this farm to put his adventures behind him. They had instead tracked him down and nearly killed him. The experience was life changing for Laramie, and he devoted himself to becoming a paladin of Lathander, devoting himself to the protection of his new friend Carras and the order of Lathander.
Carras decided that such devotion deserved equal response, and decided to create a local holy order dedicated to the tenets of his god. Between them, they located and oversaw the building of a holy shrine to Lathander hidden among the pine forest on the eastern spur of Masantar mountain. Once they had found the location, Laramie began adventuring again, this time on his own, looking for worthy individuals to invite to the shrine for healing, service or guidance. After only a few months, he had found Eric, a fellow adventurer in crisis, and took him on as his squire, in effect.
Together they have been adventuring ever since.