Root of Evil

"Hello. We were told we might be able to sell some things here?" Sora says in a friendly tone.
"We might as well see if they have anything we might be interested in purchasing as well." Swift adds.

Assuming they are interested in purchasing things, this is the list of stuff the group wants to sell: studded leather armor, leather armor (2), scimitar (3), light crossbow (2), bolts (40), quiver (2)

He politely requests your licenses, WHICH YOU HAVE, checks the goods, and rounds his offer to 100 gp. The guards also deal with storing the varied things produced and passing through Wernstrum proper, and you're passed a small pamphlet listing varied items they currently have in stock approved for purchase.

Money stuff:

Sora and Swift nod in pleased agreement at the offer and take the 100 gp.

Amber asks, "If I had ale to sell, where would I go about doing that?"

Nari is the first to notice "Quill of Retrospection", stabs a finger at it, and asks rather loudly and excitedly, "What is this!?"

The man, who is indeed Rowan, passes Sora a fat purse of coin and calls into the back, "Oi Randy! C'mon, get those feet moving, we got goods out front." A younger man, on par in age with that first guard on top of the gate, quickly shuffles out from the hallway and starts picking up armloads of the armor and weapons and moving them back out of sight.
Rowan gives Amber a quick, questioning look, as there doesn't seem to be a barrel or other real container of ale with the group. "You could try the kitchen; they handle the foodstuffs. Don't think they have money on hand there though, so you'll likely have to end up coming back here for the actual exchange." He shrugs somewhat apologetically.
He looks to Nari, a little surprised by her sudden outburst. "It's...it's uh, a magic item. Not sure why we have to hold onto them, really feel like they should be stocked in the Gift Shop, but eh. You write a question about an action you want to take, and then the quill will write out a prediction about how that'll course of action will go for you. Supposed to be pretty accurate, but I haven't used it myself"

Swift and Nari sort of absently notice a lack of movement and jingling from the man on the bench. As they cast their eyes over, he's undone his shackles but is still just sitting there with a shit-eating grin on his face. He shoots the two a friendly wink.

"Hmmm. Do you mind if we determine it's effects ourselves with a magical ritual? We don't need to take it anywhere." Amber asks.

Nari returns the friendly wave to the prisoner. Swift frowns and says, "It seems your prisoner has freed himself from his bindings."

Rowan thinks for a moment, before saying, "Yeah, I guess so. Seems fair to do before ya buy it." He stands up and begins to move back through the hallway, but Swift's statement calls his attention back. He looks to the man on the bench, who has quickly redone his manacles and jauntily shows them in their locked position. Rowan leers at him for a moment, before saying, "Yeah, he'll do that. Fairly sure he can't get out of his leg irons though, so he's not going anywhere without the bench accompanying him. Thanks for the alert though, if you could just keep an eye on him for a moment while I grab your quill I'd be much indebted."
Given a positive response, he turns the corner and out of sight.

The man on the bench blows a quick raspberry before leaning slightly towards Nari. "Narcs, huh? Like, loosen up a bit and have some fun once in a while." He indicates with his head towards Swift when he says 'Narcs'. His legs seem to still be chained to the bench, and he returns to futzing with his shackles again.

Swift shrugs and replies, "I thought you were just asking for attention. It didn't seem like you were making a serious attempt to get away with anything."

When the quill arrives, Nari will obligingly do the ritual for casting Identify on it.

He grins eerily at Swift. Menacing symbols appear in the air around him. "Nah. If I wanted to get away, I'd do something like this!" Suddenly, without another word or any movement that would indicate the arcane at work, the man disappears. His manacles float in the area for the briefest of moments before they clatter to the floor.
Your group is alone in the room.

"Uh.... is that something you all are used to or should we be worried about that?" Swift asks. While they await an answer, everyone tries to figure out what just occurred on their own.

Spoiler:

There's not a response.

Swift and Sora can't seem to find any clues about what happened...he was just there, and now he's not.

---

Sure looks to Swift and then sort of unsurely points at where the man had been sitting, indicating that where the man disappeared from is the end of his scent trail.

---

Nari doesn't see anything happen, but she feels a twinge of fey stylings at work. Sort of chaotic, mostly just faffing about, able to inexplicably do things that don't make any sense. [Rolled for knowledge]
The Feywild does connect to the Old Wood and the Great Wood in a few places, so it's not entirely unreasonable for a fey-kind to be here.

Pixies and dryads and satyrs are not the only fey creatures out there, as many would want to believe. Much as the Negative Planes have Demons and Devils, and the Positive Planes have Angels and Seraphim, the Feywild has its own group which primarily dwells within it, tending not to leave except on good occasion. The True Fae, who exist on a similar scale to archdevils and lesser deities, and the Court, a collection of many types of humanoids with strange powers and Fey sensibilities. It's...possible that this man is one of these Court fey, though why he'd be just hanging out here is beyond you.

---

Arcane-wise, Amber has heard of some spells that would do what she'd seen, Blink (3rd level) or Banishment (4) being examples, possibly Major Image (3) but this doesn't seem like an illusion. It's not unheard of to apply metamagic to spells so you could cast them without speaking or making the ritual hand motions, but this guy would have to be like, a pretty serious spellcaster to have accomplished this, and he really did not have that sort of air around him.

"He could have cast a few spells I am aware of to do this, but the power required does not seem to match what we have seen of this man's appearance." Amber says.

Nair tilts her head back and forth and says, "I think maaaaaaybe.... he's a faerie of some kind?"

Amber nods as if that idea makes more sense. She also winces as if it's a very annoying kind of making sense.

Swift just looks to Sure and nods to let Sure know she understood. She then looks at Sora and they share a shrug. The group just waits for the guardsman to return.

Another minute or so passes before Rowan returns, carrying the quill. "Sorry, had to dig around a bit to find it." He stutters his steps briefly as he notices the empty cell, but again takes his seat behind the counter. He places the quill within reach, and seems a little disgruntled but not particularly worried. "He just sort of...abjectly disappear?" The guard indicates with his head towards where the man had been chained.

The group all nods. Sora says, "If you do not know who or what he is, we were thinking he might be some kind of fey being."
Nari begins the Identify ritual.

Rowan nods slightly and gives your group a tired smile. "Makes as much sense as our guesses. Sorry if his sudden disappearance worried you; I would've warned you, but we're trying to not make it too obvious to him that we're just sort of letting him do whatever. He shows up about every other week, caught in the middle of some minor theft. We run him down; sometimes we catch him and get the stuff back, sometimes he gets away. If he catch him we lock him up for a bit, and then he just kinda disappears when he feels like it."
Rowan shrugs. "Doesn't answer any of our questions when we've got him, but he's not really hurting anything and he seems like he could get up to greater mischief if he wanted. Don't mind keeping him occupied here."

THE RITUAL BEGINS. There's a decent amount of time remaining.

"Having you tried offering him a saucer of milk?" Swift suggests, snarkily. Amber just rolls her eyes.

He seems interested in Swift's proposal for a moment, before becoming disheartened, like, 'oh. that was just a joke. okay.'
"Alright, well. He's gone; he'll show back up at some point. Don't fret yourselves none about him." He pauses for a moment as he looks to Amber, who's about TWO MINUTES into the ritual. "I uh...guess she's gonna be doing that for a bit then? Is there anything else I can do for you in the meanwhile?"

"Uh...." the group (aside from Nari) says collectively and tries to think of something. Eventually Swift pulls out the weird black paper and asks, "I don't suppose you have any idea what this is about?"

Rowan reaches out to gently take it from you, inspects it for a moment with a 'hmm' before handing it back. [Sound of GM rolling dice]
"Uhhh...it's...some kind of weird parchment? Guess you could write on it with chalk, maybe. I'd recommend checking with Wernstrum himself; if you couldn't tell he's very...enthusiastic about papers? He's also fairly knowledgeable about magics, so if it's something related to that he might know."

Amber gets slightly closer to completing THE RITUAL.

Swift shrugs and takes it back, mentally admitted they should have asked Wernstrum earlier and they just forgot about it. After that, they just wait for the ritual to finish.

Rowan sort of awkwardly looks away from the group and works on some paperwork while the group waits for Amber's ritual to complete.
...
THE RITUAL COMPLETES!

The quill is indeed a magical item, and has the spell Augury stored within it. It's activated by taking a minute and writing your question on parchment. The answer appears a moment later, in the same language. There doesn't seem to be charges or a limit to the uses for the quill, as far as Amber can tell, other than the innate randomizing of Augury.

Augury:

After Nari explains what it does, the group confers for a moment. Though it's pretty short since everyone agrees it's worth the cost. And so Sora hands over the 50 gp for it. Then she asks, "Do you happen to sell parchment?"

Rowan chuckles. "Yeah, we certainly got that. It's uh...pff a silver piece per page. I could also get you just like, a blank book and then you don't have to deal with keeping sheets of parchment just around. That's like...5 gp. Price is a bit higher than just the parchment what with the leather binding it, but it's also a pretty decent amount of parchment in there."

---

[Sounds of GM gently prodding to get a book so neither side has to deal with managing resources, but like it'd be technically more cost efficient to get sheets of parchment and just store them somewhere and retrieve them and keep track of which has how much written on them.
Book just removes needing to check how much space you have to write stuff down, unless like, several months pass in game and we're no closer to the conclusion.
Each sheet of parchment works for ~10 question/answer pairs, depending on your penmanship.]

Amber smiles, knowing she's the one who is likely going to be keeping track of this object, and says, "We will take the book. Thank you."
After handing over the five gold, the group gives a collective nod farewell and heads back over to Wernstrum to ask if he knows anything about their mystery paper.

You arrive back at Wernstrum's office, but the door is closed and he appears to be already engaging with a character who at first impression might be the grim reaper? Flowing black robe, immense scythe, general menacing/edgy aura.
Wernstrum doesn't seem particularly worried, and is chatting pleasantly with the figure.

There's some chairs in the hall if you'd like to wait patiently. The door doesn't seem locked if you just wanna bust in anyway.

You can also do anything else you'd like; you're not bound to those two options.

The group will sit in the chairs. Aside from Siwft who will lean against the wall next to the door and will try and listen in on their conversation.

Spoiler: