Chapter 2.1a: Golden Grain Inn (Orlane at night)

With Chase's expert guidance, the group makes good time through the Dim Forest, but even with switching off who is dragging the travois, they are still hampered by Reptile's dead weight. As Chase finds a good place to set camp for the night, he figures that they've covered 15 or 16 miles since fighting the boars. He figures they're between a quarter and a third of the way to Hochoch.

It's a good site that he finds: a place where a large tree fell, leaving a broad pit where the roots tore out of the ground. There are signs that some wolves had made their den here last winter; their scent has kept other animals from bedding down, though there is no trace of them being back for months. The gap in the canopy left by the falling tree allowed an oak sapling to thrive, and now its branches have grown over the top of the hole. The result is an enclosed space, sheltered from the wind with walls on three sides and from rain and dew by the branches directly overhead, which will also baffle the light of a fire. It's a trivial matter to sweep out the old bones and sharp oak leaves to set a fire and gather some pine needles to make an almost-luxurious soft place to roll out your blankets. You're glad to have stopped early to find a spot; just about the only way to have found this in the dark would have been to fall in.

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Aanbo (27/27)
Chase (14/14)
Myrtha (17/18)
Theran (5/13)

The party settles down after Chase sets up his bell alert with a spool of thread. Then the ranger begins work on preparing the haunches of pork he took from the butchered boars. One he sets up to cook over the fire, and asks the others to keep turning it as he turns to creating a chimney and rack for smoking the rest of the meat. As he works on this project, night falls completely, and the Dim Forest becomes completely dark around them. Knowing that building a more durable smoker would take too long for the mud to dry, Chase instead wanders off into the darkness, finds soft sod with various grasses, and cuts "bricks" of it to bring back to the camp. Chase makes several trips, appearing out of the darkness and then disappearing again, stepping carefully over his threads.

Under his direction, the others pitch in and help cut the meat off of the remaining haunches in long strips. They hang these on the rack made of green branches, which Chase perches over the fire. He then begins to build a dome out of the sod, taking a break for everyone to eat the cooked pork haunch before he covers the fire completely. Soon enough, everyone is getting ready to rest, with the person(s) on watch tasked with also feeding some fuel into the dome periodically.

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Aanbo (27/27)
Chase (14/14)
Myrtha (17/18)
Theran (13/13)

The group prepares to take advantage of all the daylight, beginning to stow the meat, pack up bedrolls, retrieve the bell, and heft the travois, when Theran hisses at everyone to be quiet - he's heard something. Everyone halts, listening, and then they can all hear it, too: a low grunting noise that accompanies the sort of rustling, crackling noise that the party knows from a day of moving Reptile's body. It's the sound of something heavy being dragged across the forest floor. In their hidden campsite, the party is unnoticed. They peer out over the lip of the depression and see something in the distance. It's still false dawn, so there's enough light to make out shapes but not details. At the edge of their vision, they see four humanoid shapes moving through the forest, one of them dragging a bundle on the ground behind it. It's almost like a bizarre version of the party themselves. The heroes look at each other silently. This new group is dragging something east through the forest. In a few more moments, they - whoever they are - will be gone without ever being aware of the heroes' presence.