Encouraged by his last stroke Myhkael thrusts at the stunned boggard again.
Richard continues to harass the Boggard, hoping to maintain it's attention.
Fingers still inexplicably shaking, Niadroub Kliip reloads his crossbow.
Colwyn hunches his shoulders and bends his knees, aiming his next thrust upward into the frog-man's lungs.
Richard & Colwyn combine their attacks and kill Yellow.
Mykhael badly wounds Red.
Elena steps behind Mykhael and looses another arrow at the one boggard that appears unaffected by Niadroub's spell.
Purple croaks in pain as Elena continues her vendetta against him, adding an arrow to the time he spend bound in vines.
purple, unaware his two comrades are helpless continues to attack Colwyn
His blow a clumsy one that goes wide.
The others can take no action this round. The Party may attack again.
Xantria, you are now longer Frightened and can return.
Elena nocks another arrow and shoots again.
"Keep on them! We're winning!"
Blood still pours into his eyes as Mykhael thrusts his longspear at his wounded opponent.
Seeing that Elena's spell doesn't affect people in the water, or at least not as much, Richard moves forward to support Colwyn.
Bursting out of the bushes behind the group was a very pissed off swordswoman. Her Numerian tattoos glowing as bright as possible, her face twisted in raw fury, she only had one thing to say to the boggards as she ran towards them.
"WHICH OF YOU SLIMY A$~+!$$S MADE ME RUN?!"
Mykhael finishes Red off with another solid thrust.
Richard Steps into the stream and grazes Purple, who is still reeling from Elena's second arrow wounding him.
Xantria returns loudly.
"Proobably one of the dead ones," Niadroub Kliip offers as he unloads his crossbow at the boggard right in front of him.
His shaking hands do not lend to an accurate aim, however.
Fighting against his jangled nerves, Colwyn springs out of the river and tumbles onto solid ground.
He rolls to avoid the frog-man's clumsy swings and twists his body to land behind the enemy.
Aiming to catch him off guard, from a half-kneeling stance Colwyn levels another upward thrust for the boggard's vitals.
Mykhael lets out a primal shout as his opponent falls. He pivots, putting his full weight behind the blow, and strikes at the next Boggard.
Colwyn slips past Purple, sinking his blade into his back and ending his troubled existence.
The brief but bloody fight ends, and it grows quiet again, a quick search turns up a sack filled with various loot that the Boggards where carrying and had put down when they heard you coming. Odds are they were a raiding party returning home from a successful hunt.
What are you doing now?
"Any idea why they were here? Can we expect a few more to be around here?" He turns to Niadroub, the man had understood their strange tongue.
"We treded with theem beck on the farm, semtimes. Semtimes they reided the farm." The arcanist shrugs.
Colwyn picks up the bow sticking out from the sack.
He traces his calloused finger along the shallow grooves carved across its length, wiping away the muck that they had collected.
He nods his head in appreciation for the craftsmanship, though with a twinge of ire for how roughly it had been treated.
"I hope you folks don't mind if I lay claim to this fine example of bowyer-work," he says while examining the bowstring for fraying. "It would certainly help me provide support from afar during future dust-ups."
"Human or not, they laid in ambush for us. That makes them bandits, doesn't it?"
"Do you think they could be in league with this Stag Lord?"
"Take it, it will do you more good than I," Mykhael agreed with Colwyn's request. The wounded man turned to Elena and shrugged, "Anything is possible."
He moved toward the river and started to wash off the blood and grime of the battle. As he leans himself he calls on the powers of nature to mend his wounds. When he is done he move toward Riichard and asked, "Would you like me to see to your wounds?"
Mykhael examined Richards wounds and places his hands over them. Richard can feel the wounds begin to mend.
Richard nods at Mykhael "Thank you. I don't think it matters too much now. None of them had those silver pins at least, that's some kind of sign even if a bit weak."
Hex3
This area is heavily wooded and the going is slower as you must either find and follow the animal trails, our force your way through heavy undergrowth. Shortly after midday Colwyn signals for the party to stop. He points to an unmarked beartrap that is directly in your path.
As you disarm it and move on you soon discover more, whoever the trapper is that has staked out this region he does not mark his traps so that people can avoid them.
A lot of traps in the hex, are you setting them off, or disarming them? Leaving them, or taking them as loot to teach the inconsiderate trapper a lesson?
"Whoever set these, this trapper is careless. Not marking the traps can lead to accidents."
"I suppose that might mean that not too many people come here. If the trapper thought he was the only one around, he might have felt justified in doing it this way."
"But I think that perhaps we should mark the traps for him, as a reminder that he should be more careful in the future."
"Given this trapper isn't bothering to mark them and we aim to make these areas more traveled I think it only fair to take them, they could prove useful and they wont threaten any innocents. We should progress carefully"
Mykhael suggests, "We should take them and track this person down. This is a dangerous practice and they should be made aware that sort of indiscriminate hunting wont be tolerated."
Niadroub Kliip agrees with setting off and collecting the traps.
"Wouldn't it be fitting if the lazy cad fell afoul of one of his own traps he failed to notice?" Colwyn asks with a brief, mocking laugh as he gathers some sturdy sticks to trigger and collect the traps.
"If he's gonna be an ass with these things, then he shouldn't be using them," Xan said before helping to gather up the traps.
Why do I feel like I'm gonna lose a finger doing this?
On to Hex2:
You move out of the forest and back onto the open air of the plains, your exploration is unmarred by any encounters beyond the normal wildlife.
Hex1
The next day is much the same, rolling plains devoid of any signs of settlement. Around mid afternoon Colwyn makes an interesting discovery.
Amid an overgrown section of blackberries lies a hidden cairn of stones marking the grave of a long forgotten barbarian.
What are you doing now?
"Not sure I know of any tribes operating out of this area, perhaps this has been here a long time, maybe we'll encounter more signs of the tribe as we explore."
It is likely that this cairn is one of the Tiger lords, from a time when that tribe’s territory stretched all the way from Numeria to the Narlmarches—patrols from Rostland have steadily forced these barbarians back to the west, and the majority of their cairns are toppled or long forgotten.
Mykhael gathers some black berries as the other examine the cairn. "These will make a nice pie or snack," he suggests as he stuffs a few into his mouth.
"That's beyond me," Colwyn says as he cocks his head to examine the cairn. "I'm not much of a reader, but when the Stolen Lands used to be my stomping grounds, I never encountered any savages. Still, I've heard that tribal chiefs often get buried with their riches."
He suddenly shakes his head.
"No. Best not to. These old mounds are often laid with just as many curses as stones, and I ain't risking it for some old copper bangles."
"This cairn probably was left by a tribe called the Tiger Lords. They are Numerian barbarians, and their range used to stretch this far. The Rostlanders drove them out a long time ago, and most cairns like these are lost."
"Well, my friends? Are we about finished with this macabre place?"
Colwyn plops down on a fallen log and tears open a bundled trail meal.
"I see no reason to linger here. Whichever old warrior is resting here, he seems to be resting comfortably."
Hex7 Plains.
Hex8 Back into the trees.
You cross more peaceful plains before returning to the Narlmarches. As you travel through the old and heavy growth you discover the body of a trapper, crushed under a log from the deadfall he was attempting to set over a river crossing.
It takes Colwyn & Richard a few moments of careful examination to find the cause of the 'Accident'. The rope that had been supporting the log as the trapper set it in place has been cut by something small and sharp.
A fine hatchet, stuck in the stump of a tree a few feet from his dead body’s outstretched arm, is a masterwork hand axe.
What are you doing now?
Elena goes over to the body of the trapper, to check in case he is not quite dead, and to provide assistance if he may be revived.
Richard will check he area for tracks. "Revenge perhaps or someone proving a grisly point? Either way we should still stop to give the man a decent burial, leave him here like this and I wouldn't be surprised if he come back as some kind of strange undead creature."
The trapper is long dead, you estimate at least three days, his legs were crushed and he was pinned underwater, drowning quickly.
There are no tracks around the deadfall he was setting aside from his own.
Mykhael agreed and helped with the burial of the unfortunate man. When they are done he plants some of the blackberries he gathered earlier to mark the grave.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this was the fellow responsible for those haphazard bear traps we recovered the other day. What do you know? The sorry sot did die by his own shoddy work! Hah, I was right!"
The discussion of burial to stave off the threat of undeath sends a shiver down Colwyn's spine.
"As if it weren't bad enough that my dreams have been haunted by that damned cairn and its mouldering bones. Yes, let's bury him."
"The rope for the deadfall trap is cut but... I can't find any tracks. It has been a few days so perhaps the elements have concealed them. Looks like someone might be making a point or getting revenge but they were careful to leave as little evidence as possible."
Hex9
It's a quiet, peaceful journey again, as you explore the area Colwyn is the only one who sees a large nest of some type set high in a fir tree.
What are you doing now?
"Hold a moment. What do you all make of that?" he asks, pointing up to the tree's high branches. "I'm not familiar with anything that makes a nest that large."
"Kin we eat it?"
"Eagles' nests are quite large. But I don't care to eat them; they are majestic creatures."