Thanks for taking a detailed look and for the kind words!
Fair criticisms!
In the Travelers event, I tried to do much with few words to fit the space! The intent was for the caravaners to approach without realizing that the party includes bellkeepers, and that it might reveal itself during the interaction. That could lead to revealing the bellkeeper “secret” to the players or reinforce the impending sense of doom. Or, fingers crossed, something wild like a kidnapping of a caravaner!
For the PCs, the main mechanism for influencing the story is the NPC clocks, and apart from the escort mission itself, I see how that might feel limited. Expanding the locations into a proper point crawl with more varied locales and further choices is something I would have loved to do with more space. I had a third Bellkeeper NPC at one point, but felt that Ash and Yalla would be hard enough to manage and needed the space!