A. The Murderous Miller.

Hilaire returns to the Waystation and gives a reward to Athron and the others in payment for preventing Tallon’s crew from making off with all the premises’ valuables. Athron, Duran and Boeden are soon reunited with the others in the town of Obber’s Mill, where they have been working with Ghini Eglund to patrol the countryside in search of whatever killed Cyrus Fletcher.

One morning, they work the same quadrant, with Ghini going to check on a lodge used by woodcutters. The PCs find tracks, which lead them to a den where a large bear lurks in the shadows. The female dire bear, feeling her cubs are threatened, charges out. In the middle of the battle, her mate arrives and is engaged in a wrestling match with Boeden before both are killed. The two cubs are trapped in the den by their mother’s body.

Vermillion and Duran go off to meet up with Ghini, and find her disabled on the ground, fighting off four feral dogs set upon her by an armed man who stands back and laughs at her plight. Duran and Vermillion kill the man and dogs, and Ghini confirms that he was Cloten. She further tells them that Cloten admitted to killing Fletcher and leaving his body for the dire bears to find.

Ghini says she can make arrangements for the two cubs to be cared for, far away from any humans, and tells the PCs they have earned the right to search Cloten’s mill. They find a stash of stolen goods, which includes a box bearing the seal of Cassick’s family and holding half a dozen fine garnets. They also find an account book, which has both Cloten’s normal accounts in visible ink, and accounts of his thefts in invisible ink. Cloten was in cahoots with Tallon’s gang to rob merchants traveling the north/sound road.

B. Towards the Ziggurat.

Before leaving, Broc gives Ghini a ring that he has claimed as part of his share of the loot, grabs her and gives her a passionate kiss. (DM’s note: Chris later says that in Broc’s mind, Ghini is now his betrothed – it’s hard for me to tell if Chris is serious about this.)

The PCs turn east, into the dense forest at the western edge of Sa’iph/Torei. After several days, they find the overgrown remains of a stone road – some of the central stones bear an engraved image of an ogre-king’s face. Over the next couple of weeks, they travel deeper, and soon see a flash of bright light in the distance, followed by columns of smoke rising from the forest at least 15 miles south of the light itself.

Eventually, they reach a gorge, with a very overgrown ziggurat on the other side. They hear two male voices talking. A younger man urges an older one to take all the horses and flee. The older responds that he can’t, because he – unlike the younger – would be leaving family behind. Vermillion, Duran, Cassick and Athron step out, and offer the two debt-bound enough gold to buy both their and any family member’s freedom. Lionel and Edward tell them that Toinet Shal Antazos led the party there. In addition to her personal guard, she also has a female sorceress, Sherat Shal Ashili, and several other guards – a mix of debt-marked and Shal. At least two guards were killed by something within the ziggurat, but the horse-handlers have no idea what.

The party is then allowed to cross the wood-and-rope bridge without the two humans raising an alarm for the party from Sa’iph.

(DM’s notes: I was quite glad that the players did not simply rush the two guards and kill them, as a way to prevent the giving of an alarm, and that they instead decided to use social skills to get around it.) This photograph used under Creative Commons license.