I will be making one at some point today to answer the question of what we will do with them. Frodrick will be saying this without consultation to the group, and he may be openly (Or taken to the side and quietly) revoked/rebuked for his words if anyone is against it.

(Edit):
Took no where near as long to make the post. Thought it might take longer. Feel free to respond. In the mean time, I say Owen starts up on the post of what happens on our way back and the next couple days there after while we recover from our injuries.

My idea would be that while Zeran rests up, the rest of the party starts exploring the plains/flat lands to the east of the Oleg's Trading Post. That is, I am thinking instead of wainting for a week or two for Zeran to recover and doing nothing, we go out, explore a hex or two, coming back to the fort after each one. We could also leave our paladin to treat Zeran so that he heals faster, though Zeran would be forced to stay in bed for those days.

Unless people are worried we will be running into verocious wildlife, I don't see a reason why we can't start with the places where we can see for a ways away (little chance for getting the drop on us).

Then once Zeran is healed, we could make our way south where (lets just play with the idea that Oleg might know a bit of the basic geography told by traders and we spoke to him on it at some point) the flatlands turn into hills. There are more areas for enemies to hide in there, so it would be ebst to go in force. Frodrick also doesnt want to go into the forest right away because it will be more difficult to navigate with Jargon Hooves, and he may have to leave his mount behind for that exploring bit. He is hoping that the group will get better at fighting as a group during the time in the flatlands and hills so that he can depend on them more and his mount less.

Loot* -Silver Earrings (unappraised)
-Wooden Music Box (unappraised)
-Crates of Furs x3
-Polished Wooden Case containing:
---Bottles of Greenish Herbal Liquor** x8 (unappraised)
-Steel Bear Trap (probably not going to get much gp value for this even if it were appraised)
-321sp, 90gp = 122.1G

*Notably absent from the loot is any indication of a Svetlana's wedding ring
**Luka can inform you that this case of booze was meant for the Stag Lord; he's an alcoholic, and without this shipment he'll not be a happy camper.
Retreived Gear -Studded Leather Armour#
-Mwk Handaxes# x2
-Daggers# x3* -Potion of Cure Light Wounds#
-Short Swords x4
-Longbows x4
-Even More Arrows x77* -Rations
-125G

*for the fourth dagger and additional arrows, see Zeran's inventory and ground.
#Perhaps obviously perhaps not, Kressle's gear is tagged thus. Zeran has laid a claim on one of the two handaxes, so if you have a counter claim to the same one, better stake it quickly.
Also, it's probably worth mentioning one more item that doesn't quite rightly go in either Loot or Gear:

-Wagon (req: 2 horses)

EDIT: There are also a handful of tents stashed with the loot, if you're interested. There's also a bunch of food rations and firewood.


--Added to equipment except for chaff loot:
-Studded Leather Armour
-Daggers x3
-Short Swords x4
-Longbows x4
And the miscellaneous treasure-items, like the Music Box (which it appears Zeran gets to keep) and the other thing what was it, or yeah, the pair of earrings.

I calimed nothing last time, so I will take my equal share of the gold that could come out of all this + the healing potion

I jsut read part of the post... wtf is Krii doing killing someone who is down? Apparently Frodrick's statements to the prisoners was unheard to Krii, and he will rebuke him for killing people who had given up and were offered amesty.

If no one else wants it I would like that music box please.

Krii killed one of the people they were told not to bother with in fact he killed the one that they were told to give a slow and painful death if you wanna talk to him about it go ahead might give some interesting tension or just cause problems your choice

I don't see any contradiction between Frodrick offering the surviving prisoners amnesty and Krii mercy killing the mortally wounded. If we explicitly wanted to tend, revive, and carry a train of bandits home with us, that's also possible, though they'd probably be even more of a burden on travel than Zeran is already. I suppose space could be moved out in the wagon to transport them, but they would require medical attention before they were even useful to working off their sins as it were.

Also that one (Gregor) tried to stab Jargon numerous times.

In other news, I happened to chance upon this song and thought it would be perfect for Zeran's situation

So I will be getting a RP post here in the next... 24 hrs? This will be from the time Krii kills the man in that was lanced to the present situation and then maybe some in the future to keep things moving.

One thing that I want to note is that Frodrick would recommend is properly exploring ALL the grassland hexegons. As noted, this will make it easy on Jargon Hooves, and then we dont have to worry about too much wildlife as we all figure out what were are to each other.

In the metagame sense, it will be faster to gather XP from exploring each grassland hex as opposed to the forest or hill hexes. This is easy and fast XP that should not be over looked - seeing as how a round of combat can take anywhere from a day to a week (depending on how forgiving the DM's schedule is), we could, theoretically, get through almost all the hexes without fighting... If this includes Oleg's hex, but not the road hexes, thats 16. 16*100 (I think it was 100XP per hex properly explored) is 1600 XP. that is 320 XP each.

If the DM is willing to, he could also just give easch memeber 25 XP per hex explored (as this is what it was designed for - 100/4) but in any case, we will get 16-20% to our next level up.

Just saying

Just as a heads up when I next have the chance I am going to send things flying forward on a whirlwind adventure. I was just unreasonably tired of typing last night and ended up playing LoL for a couple hours. Besides, there was totally an appropriate point leave a break there! Right! That's my story and I'm going to validate my shortcomings with it!

Anyway, when I launch you off next, as guided by Frodrick's course (or just as likely just making up a course for you following Frodrick's vague guidelines, starting with the territory immediately around Oleg's, then moving across the whole grasslands area first. I'll finish the post when you guys either bump into a Location or else run into a Random Encounter that you have to fight (non-combat encounters, i.e. like sightings and random unimportant NPC's passing I'll leave a mention and move on letting you deal with it in Backpost if you even need to).

Looking at the map there are two possible Location Encounters for you to bump into first, with one seeming most likely. I'll start planning to post for that when I stop working.

Thanks to Ray for reminding me to sell the chaff loot finally. Selling all three spare daggers, four longbows, four leather armours, one studded leather, four short swords. Adds up to 215.5G added to party wealth

Oleg's Coin: 284.5G remaining for this week. (4 Pharast - 8 Pharast so it synchs up with the order Zeran's getting and thus refreshes at the same time the shop does)

A little extra info to be gained from talking to Luka.

-The perception of most the bandits is that the Stag Lord, after establishing his power base, seems to be slipping into the bottom of a cask of booze.

-Whatever they think of his leadership, he inspires fear in them... less immediate fear than the party, since he's over their and you're here, but they can tell you he's a deadeye with a bow and he's bloody strong--apparently once crushed a man's fist to mush with one hand.

-There are more tales and theories about whether the intimidating headgear he has is just a stag helmet with a mask, or his actual head. No one has ever seen his face without it. There is speculation that even if it is a helmet, there's no face underneath.

-It's hard to keep track of all the bandits in the region working for the Stag Lord, so there is a pass-code to get into the Stag Lord's fort, situated on the north shore of the Tuskwater. The current phrase is "By the bloody bones of St. Gilmorg, who want's to know?". No one knows who the hell 'St. Gilmorg' is supposed to be.

-The Stag Lord apparently keeps a strange old man locked up in the basement. It seems some think the Stag Lord might be a puppet for the old man, and most are incredibly creepped out by him. Luka personally isn't sure about reports about puppet lords, but he's seen the old man once, and his eyes are not ones you'd want to cross lightly.

Do you think that you could make the hexes we have explored in a different colour so that we know exactly which ones have been completed?

I suggest red (green's compliment) unless someone is colourblind.

I actually considered finding some way to mark it, among them outlining the explored hexes. The problem with outlining explored hexes in red is that that is exactly the method I'd been using to mark the size of the kingdom in the second chapter (and the two demnotations are not mutually exclusive, they both have to coexist on the same map.

Beyond that, the reason why the map looks no different than it has since we ended the last game is because tonight will be the first chance I've had to get the original document and edit it XD so you should be seeing some changes then, to go with whatever we come up with as the best way to denote explored areas.

Also I forgot to bring it up but Jargon learned the Aid trick on the 10th. Congratz. I'll throw a note of it in the post.

P.S. It's actually more of a gentle but moderate snowfall. If it were an actual full-blown storm you'd probably be in real trouble.

I will be sure to rewrite my post accordingly.

EDIT: And done. As an interesting side note, I talked to my sister about the menitionings of spiders in winter. She confirmed that insects and arachnids do not last long outside in winter. Then she made a very interesting point: what if they look like spiders, but are not exactly like spiders?

She elaborated and said that scientists guesstimate that dinosaurs, though seeming to look like reptiles, were not actually reptiles: they were warm blooded. Something along those lines could be thrown in a fantasy world without ANY of us (or our characters) really needing to know. It was a fun little learning experience / reflection on how to accept what we would believe to be impossible in our world as possible in another.

Fun times.

Handles Animal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhlQgvHmQ0

(Let me know how to actually make words into a hyper link again?)

I can see both sides of reasoning behind the alchemists fire, but I thought I should bring it up anyways. We know the spider is greviously hurt in character - it stopped coming out until we goaded it on. As such, we know another strike or two will fell it. Do we really need to use an alchemists fire to get the job done? It is safer b/c of the whole poison bit, but I can see a lot more useful thing to do with it than kill a spider.

In the end, it is Nick's (and ultimately Krii's) call. I just wanted to make a quick note.

This isn't an arguement or debate - do w/e you want. I am just throwing a thought out before you post.