Stella, as always, was a late riser, mostly because she was a late sleeper, always losing track of time by getting lost in a book, far too excited to go to bed until her head started to sink so low that it was resting on the pages. She sat up straight as her roomate woke her, and blinked at her dumbly for a few minutes, before turning to blink out the window, and seeing that it was light outside, she began frantically getting dressed. She then joined the others in the hallway, fully dressed and ready to go. "D-do you r-really think anyone here would kn-know something?" she piped up quietly. Time was of the essence if something really wrong was afoot, so some might say that chatting up a bunch of people that lived far enough away from the fortress that they didn't interact with it directly most days, and therefore had a very low chance of knowing anything unless someone from inside the fortress managed to let something slip, or some were employed at the fortress itself and saw something, was a complete waste of time.

However, on the other hand, others might say that while the fortress staff might be coached or coerced into pretending that everything was fine, normal townsfolk might let certain details slip, not knowing that it was any indication that anything was wrong, or that they weren't simply fun rumors to pass the time passing around. If that were the case, then chatting up the locals might give them a leg up on what to look for, which they might otherwise miss if they had no idea what to look for. This was then not a waste of time, but instead valuable information gathering that would instead save time. It was hard to say, when they were strangers in a strange place, which path to take. Really, all they could do was just choose a path, and hope that it was right. "M-maybe just people who talk to a lot of people... hear a lot of stories..." such as an innkeepers or shopkeepers... maybe even the people at the Golden Sun might have heard something, although honestly they were so fancy, it didn't seem likely they saw or spoke to many people.