We recuperate for a while after being almost killed, and we decide to head back out. Dardenne is adjusting to being a woman.

After a day of travel, we notice that alongside the path, there are two bears that seem to be following us. We try and determine if they are going to attack, but it doesn’t seem so.

We move off but they keep following us. Mord speaks a spell on his staff and it turns into a unicorn. The beast communicates telepathically with the bears and learns that they’ve had their home, a cave near here, attacked by “tall creatures” that we guess are werewolves or gnolls. They came after us because Mord reminds them of their friend, who we assume to be a druid. They say that their friend may be dead; they saw blood but are not sure what happened to him.

Dardenne and Hadrian confer and agree that this is something that we should help with. Mord also wants to help the druid if he can. We head off the road and follow the bears through the woods.

After a while the bears stop and tell the unicorn that any further, we may get attacked by the things. We say that we’ll continue on from here. The bears, unicorn and Mord’s raccoon stay behind.

The party decided that we will plan this time instead of just rushing into things, since last time that didn’t work out so well. We decide that Mord and Darius will sneak up behind them, and the rest of us will draw them out.

Mord turns into a squirrel and crawls on the top of the cave. Darius hides toward the entrance. Filarion taunts the gnoll standing toward the entrance, viciously. Dardenne then creates a bonfire underneath him and he leaps to the side.

We start to attack and all the gnolls come out of the cave to see what is going on. Hadrian comes up and starts fighting. Dardenne uses his staff to create a lightning bolt that kills both of the hyenas and one of the gnolls. The other gnolls are taken out pretty quickly.

We head inside and clear out the small cave. All of the bodies are dragged out and burned. We look through the cave and find several items of interest. Dardenne checks and a few of them are magical.

Mord asks the bears if we might stay the night, and they agree. They also say that they’d like us to help them hang up their friend’s wooden figure on the wall, and we oblige.

Dardenne finds leather armor, a cylindrical metal flask that seems full of lamp oil. One of the

The next morning we head out and while on the road are attacked by a shambling mound of weeds. While fighting it, it spits out two zombies that attack us as well. After defeating it, we see that there are half-decayed dead bodies in it. One of the bodies has a patchwork cloak with some of the patches gone. There is some other equipment as well. An ornate bow with divots in it, a cap, and a jewel.

The next day we come up to a crossroads with an inn. We stay there for the night.