In this case, it's a pretty simple case of "you tried to kill me so I'm gonna kill you right back." The party camped for the night and were set upon by possessed elves (i.e. fae-elves, tm FB) out hunting humans. They were mind-controlling humans to be feral hounds for them, and also mind-controlling elves to be their archers. All but two feral men and one archer were killed. And now the fae-elves want to take the party's stuff.

Punchy smashed up one feral man with a beer mug and killed an archer in the bushes, for the record.

(The day before, they found a girl whose parents had been killed by bandits. They had her delivered to her grandfather in Enche. Turns out her grandfather is one of the mind-controlled archers, though most of the party don't realize that because Edric only saw the man in his magic hat.)

If it's any consolation, the knife is no stronger than it was when it was knife-sized. It's just larger now.

Dom, I know you're super busy at work these days, so I've been trying to have the scene work around Taddeo. Let me know if I am moving too fast for you! I am still learning this GMing stuff, especially with combat scenes. Please call me on it if I'm making it hard to participate!

I wanted to check, do you want to have Taddeo deal with this first:


or have Taddeo drop everything (including the half-dead elf) and run over to help Greenleaf?

Oh man! Sorry Insp! I'll edit my post and let Greenleaf suffer. My bad.

edit: Post edited. Sorry!

For the GM (and other players): Zaljan has abused the heck out of his power over spirits in this fight (and this journey), and for the next while, spirits are going to avoid him, for fear he's going to snatch them to make them do something. Bound spirits (Uncle Tuljan, the energies he uses to heal) can't avoid him, but the wild ones will until he's managed to do some work regaining their trust. Thus, fires will go out around him, wind will go still and avoid him, trees and plants will wither, earth will go barren, etc.

Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

There are eleventy quintillion things I love about this group of players and their characters, and that make me feel truly honored to get to create this story with you, but I think my favorite of all may be how often, in the midst of all the peril and violence and things going wrong, the PCs choose to be utterly kind.

Meanwhile, in the other thread...

Ruan continues to be punny. It's probably because he's big and hulking like a Neanderthal. Their humor was always a little... lowbrow.

...

Okay, I'll stop, I'll stop!

Funny story: Zaljan's starting to feel, at this moment, like how I feel at work most of the time. Pulled in a dozen different directions and expected to fix everything simultaneously and completely.

Hey, nobody ever said earning 100gp was gonna be easy -- uh, wait.

I forgot to have Captain give you guys any kind of official documents, but she would have, so let's retcon in that you're carrying a sealed letter certifying you're authorized to negotiate on behalf of Sael.

Or at least, that's what she told you the letter said.

Sparrow can always throw an illusion over the paper to make it say what the Captain said it said...

He'd have to first know it doesn't say that, or else there'd be no reason for him to do so.

I dunno... I can see Sparrow mucking with the wording of it out of sheer faerie perversity.

Just in case I've done one of my famous crap jobs of exposition, the party currently has two weakened but alive oxen (they'll travel more slowly for a couple days but will be fine after that, or Greenleaf can perhaps pep them up with Ranger!Skillz) and two zombi oxen. And two carts, one of which still has all their gear.