I Wasn't Expecting That!

   While waiting on some feedback for one part of the story I'm writing, I jumped ahead in the narrative to a scene where two groups of characters first meet up.  I wanted to play around with the RPG trope where the PCs automatically trust each other, best exemplified by a quote I saw on the internet attributed to someone named Charwoman Gene:

    “Hello, you seem greedy and prone to violence, want to go camping together for the rest of our lives?”

    In the scene, three of the four characters have had fairly mythic childhoods.  They've heard of each other by reputation, and they recognize each other by sight, based on description alone (which isn't hard; one character is seven feet tall, and another has Crystal-Gayle-length golden hair).  The fourth character has had a more mundane life (well, he's an ultra-rich swashbuckling sorcerer, but his childhood was normal), and he doesn't understand how the other three can just start talking like they're old friends when they've never met before, and, in fact, just happened to randomly meet in a seaside pub.

    My original plan was for the four of them to team up and go on a side quest.  I actually wrote that adventure way back in the mid 90's, but the story needs to be drastically rewritten.  Before the party just sort of stumbled upon the dungeon.  Now they're purposely looking for it.

    Anyway, the mythic characters ask the mundane one of he knows where the dungeon is (his ancestors were the last people to leave the place alive).  Here's where my story jumped the tracks: I realized a bit late in the game that he'd have no useful knowledge to help in their quest.  He rightfully points out that the events they're referencing happened almost four hundred years before, he's from the other side of the continent anyway, and it would be crazy to just expect him to know where to go.

    So now I'm stuck.  How do the characters get from Point A to Point B organically?  At this point, the mundane character sarcastically asks why they don't just go look at ancient tax rolls or something.  The main character thinks this is a great idea; they should all go to the spooky, ghost-infested library and look up the information they need.

    Now, the spooky, ghost-infested library has been a part of Aloden for years.  I have quite the backstory for how it was founded, and what happened to make it spooky and ghost-infested.  It's just that I've never actually told a story (or written a D&D game) where anybody ever thought to go.   'Cuz, y'know, ghost infested.  Now I've got a reason, and I have to actually figure out how to describe the place.   It'll be fun to write, but that part of the story just tripled in length, at the very least.

   At least I'll be true to gaming tropes: side quests do tend to metastasize.