Mishaps at Thorn River

The commander of the guards, Keston Garess, introduced himself and presented the party with a quest to hunt down a bandit by the name of Falgrim Sneeg. The priest of Erastil, Jhod Kavken, asked them to find a lost temple of Erastil somewhere to the south guarded by a huge angry bear. The party, with this information, decided to get a night's rest and then head southward once more to keep exploring and hopefully find and capture Sneeg. Yi had come down with a strange fever unique to Hobgoblins that he called the "Polish cough" and had to stay behind at the Trading Post. Yulia presented them with some information on the other adventuring teams, then they set off.

They explored uneventfully on the first day, but once night came Artesia was assailed by a grig, a half-cricket fae who forced her to dance with its magic. It wasn't hostile, so Artesia tried talking to it but failed miserably. Waking Vizma up proved slightly more successful, as the old man could actually hold a conversation with the strange little thing. He asked the grig about the bear, and it seemed to hint that it was some kind of were-creature or otherwise cursed, and pointed them to the west-northwest. Then it hopped away, and the night continued as normal. They spent the next day exploring, moving on uneventfully to the northwest and spending the night there. That night, the party was pranked by Fae much to Sir Garett's consternation. Vizma told the party about Feybribes to avoid the prank, and Garett successfully managed to get himself exempt, though Nisha failed.

The next morning, Vizma had scribbles and drawings all over his face and bald head and Nisha woke with uncomfortable knots in her hair. The drawings on Vizma turned out to be a treasure map, and the party took some time to figure it out before setting off again. They rather quickly found the treasure spot - the tree on the hill that the scrap of cloth they found in the spider nest depicted. They spent 10 minutes digging the treasure up, finding a masterwork dagger, a potion, a ring and a spellbook. As they were dividing up the treasure, the Fae turned Artesia's hair into various rainbow colors much to her horror and the others' amusement. Nisha helped her fix it and they got moving again, setting up camp shortly afterwards.

The next morning, the pranks continued - Vizma and Nisha woke up smelling particularly stinky. Once they got moving again, Vizma kept a Detect Animals spell up, looking for bears on the way. Suddenly, as they were entering the hills, Vizma turned and ran away, the party following in bewilderment. As it turned out, he had detected a Shambling Mound, telling the party that they should run and that he would not help if they decided to fight it. They wisely decided to go around it, and found a weird crack in the rocks a little while later before making camp. That night, the grig - Tyg-Tytter-Tut - came back with company; a faerie dragon named Perlivash. The faerie dragon introduced itself and thanked them for being good sports, and then warned them that bandits were ahead, drawing a map of the bandit encampment down by the nearby river. The fae agreed to help and the party made plans to attack the bandit camp. The plan was that the Fae and Vizma would disable and distract the bandits while Luka, Nisha and Artesia took them out, hopefully quickly. Artesia then spent the rest of the night teaching the grig the righteous word of Ragathiel, and she seemed genuinely receptive to it.

The next morning, they set out - it turned out that the weird crack in the hills was actually the entrance to a mine. Nisha pulled the Queen of Swords from her deck - a good omen, she thought. They ambushed the bandits, and things quite quickly went south as they had failed to account for the bandits also having bows - Garett went down almost instantly, and the plan switched to saving him from death. After some panicking and downing 3 of the bandits, they successfully got him back up, and the scene faded to black as the fight seemed to turn back in their favor (maybe)...