"Okay. We're ready to go. Are you done in there?" Willow stands at the edge of the pool, staring impatiently at Zhaquadan.

Poised at the entrance of Klarg's chamber, Rudo stands with one hand on the fully laden handcart, ready to descend to the cavern entrance below. Behind him, Steamknuckle comes walking up. The rest of the goods follow shortly behind him, floating strangely in midair.

It seems that after some consideration, Steamknuckle cleverly decided to make use of his magical floating disk spell to once again solve the party's latest logistical problem.

Peering behind the gnome, Zhaquadan sees the room they left apparently empty. Only the neatly stripped and stacked corpses of the goblins and bugbear remain, with their gear tossed into a pile in the smoldering fire pit. The freshly cleaned white wolf's hide lays in a bundle strapped across Willow's backpack.

Zhaquadan stares at Steamknuckle for several seconds and when he is satisfied that he appears ok Zhaquadan says "let's get moving" and begins to walk down the stream watching the walls, ground,  and ceiling for anything unusual as he splashes away.

Steamknuckle eventually notices Zhaquadan staring at him, and returns the dwarf's gaze with a perplexed look of his own. Other than this, the gnome seems fine; in good spirits even.

Then, when Zhaquadan turns to splash his way down the middle of the rushing stream, avoiding the perfectly good dry path beside it, Steamknuckle catches the looks of surprised disdain forming on his comrades' faces. He quickly speaks up in defense of his partner.

"Leave him be," the old gnome says. "He finds peace and answers in the water. It doesn't have to make sense to you. All you have to do is appreciate it when that enlightenment comes back to heal your wounds and save your life."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:59, Sat 12 Mar 2016.

"Whatever," Rudo grunts. "No skin off my back if he wants to take a swim in full armor in the middle of a goblin's den. I mean, we all knew he wasn't playing with a full deck of cards anyway, right?"

He starts pulling the loaded handcart down toward the sloping exit passage. "Let's just get out of here. As long as he can keep up, he can scoot home on his ass for all I care."

The group works together to ease the piled goods down the curving slope of passageway beside the stream, until eventually they reach the mouth of the cavern without incident. Dusky twilight streams in from the darkening forest outside. There are no living creatures to be seen, aside from the party themselves, Burgess the mastiff still faithfully standing watch just outside the cave mouth, and the three surviving wolves chained up in the kennel room just off the main entrance.

Without a word, Willow nods to Burgess and he quickly bounds over to her side. Then she turns and enters the kennel, approaches the wary wolves, and quickly strikes off their chains to release them. The wolves sniff at her for a moment, baring their teeth at the combined smells of the mastiff beside her and the fresh wolf pelt strapped to her pack. But as soon as they've edged past her, they forget everything else and make a break for the woods. Nobody moves to stop them. They disappear into the night.

Meanwhile, Zhaquadan makes his careful way down the slope along the middle of the stream bed. The slope is steep and the water rushes with some force, but he is able to keep his balance without much difficulty. As he descends, Zhaquadan vigilantly scans his surroundings for signs of anything interesting. There is little to be found. All he manages to find is a single lost javelin, lodged between two rocks in the stream just below the point where the rope bridge passes overhead.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:49, Mon 14 Mar 2016.

"Very good," Sildar says. "Thank you all again for helping me clean up this nest of vermin. It looks like the coast is clear, and so our job here is done."

He looks around at the thick forest surrounding the cave entrance. "I do hope you remember the way back to the road, though. Gundren and I were bound and barely conscious on the way here. I do not recognize exactly where we are."

"Don't worry. We know the way." Willow briskly mounts her mastiff steed and rides off toward the narrow entrance of the footpath on which the party arrived. Its partially concealed opening is difficult to see in the darkness.

She turns back to the rest of the party before plunging into the shadowy thickets. "Stay close behind me. Be ready for ambushers. And for Arvoreen's sake, watch out for those traps we found on the way in. It'll be a lot easier to stumble into them in the dark."

The party sets off on the trail back to the road to the southeast. Their pace is brisk and purposeful, without much concern for traps at first, since both of the ones encountered earlier that day had been found fairly close to the road. Progress is quick and uneventful for over an hour, as the trail runs smooth and wide to easily accommodate both the handcart and Steamknuckle's magical transport disk.

The group pauses only briefly when Steamknuckle informs them that his spell is about to expire. They stop to rest for about ten minutes while he meditates once more on his ritual incantation, refreshing the spell without having to expend any of his precious magical energy. He completes his ritual without incident and the party continues on.

After a while, Willow slows Burgess to a stop at the front of the line. "Here we are," she says. "I was worried I might not be able to notice it on the way back, but there it is, plain as day."

She points to the ground in front of her. Sure enough, the pale moonlight shining down is enough to starkly highlight the difference in color of the artificially scattered sand atop the pit trap.

"We don't have to worry about announcing our presence any more. Let's clear this covering away so we can clearly see the edges of the pit on our way around."

The group walks up to the edge of the discolored sand and clears it away, revealing the edges of a large canvas tarp. Together they grab it and pull. Sand cascades down into the pit along its far edge as the tarp pulls away, unveiling a frame of thin sticks spread out across the expanse to hold the sand-covered tarp in place. The pit is roughly six feet square and ten feet deep, covering most of the width of the trail.

"Well how the hell are we going to get this cart over the pit?"

"We'll have to clear out some of this shrubbery to make room around it."

Willow nods, and the group gets to work hacking out a path through the bushes along the left side of the trail. After several minutes' work, they are able to carefully guide the loaded handcart along the now-cleared trail edge. Steamknuckle's disk easily follows, and in another moment the entire party is safely on the southern edge of the pit.

"Shouldn't be too far from the road now," Willow says. "We hit both of these traps within half an hour of starting. Snare should be next; keep your eyes open."

The group continues, a bit slower now in anticipation of the next trap, but still at a pace driven by the anticipation of their journey's imminent end.

The trail has tightened considerably by now, but Rudo has no trouble yanking the handcart along, crashing it roughly through the encroaching branches. Steamknuckle follows, his floating disk benefiting from the space created by Rudo's trailblazing effort. However, occasionally the trail narrows so tightly that the party is forced to stop and hack out a passage wide enough for both transport vehicles to squeeze through, without losing any of their precariously stacked cargo.

Several minutes pass before Willow comes to another abrupt stop. The group crowds up behind her, seeing the familiar pile of dry leaves dumped across the center of the trail. Willow dismounts, grabs a stick from the underbrush, and pokes around with it in the leaf pile. In a rush the snare springs and grabs hold of the stick, scattering leaves into the air as it jerks up and out of Willow's grasp. A moment later the stick dangles harmlessly from the branch overhead as a dry rain of leaves settles gently back down to the ground.

Willow mounts up and leads the way onward.

"Thank the gods," Willow breathes, as the trail opens up in front of the party. She looks around at the familiar clearing of the goblin encampment perched atop the northern road embankment.

The group emerges from the thicket overlooking the road. Aside from the two swelling horse corpses still lying beside the path, the road is empty. A chilly breeze swirls through the quiet meadow.

Sildar descends the embankment to approach the dead horses. Despite the stench of their rapidly decaying bodies, he kneels beside the large gray stallion.

"Ah, Smokey. Such a fine horse. I'll miss you." He lingers a moment, then stands up and looks back toward the party. "I suppose I'll have to finish the journey to Phandalin on my own two feet. Hopefully they have a spare horse for sale once we get there."

"Not to worry," Willow says. "We've got a wagon stashed somewhere near here. You can ride in the back." She sets off atop Burgess to seek out Stumpy's hiding place.

After a brief search, the party finds Stumpy and the wagon safely hidden a short distance to the southeast, in a clearing a few dozen feet off the road. The oxen lay sleeping beneath a nearby tree, but awaken to clamber ponderously to their feet as the group approaches. Stumpy snaps to attention in the driver's seat of the wagon, clutching his crossbow, but quickly lowers it when he recognizes the returning adventurers.

"So you didn't find the dwarf, eh?" he asks when he sees only Sildar accompanying the party.

"Sadly, no," Sildar replies. "He was taken to their castle northeast of here. Now we must proceed to Phandalin with all due haste to inform the local ruler of what's happened, and muster a rescue force."

Stumpy stares at Sildar as if he's not quite sure what to make of the nearly naked old man. "I see you're in need of help in more ways than one, sir. I'll gladly drive this wagon to the nine hells and back for you, but, begging sir's pardon, I'm here to do a job; and barring the return of Master Gundren Rockseeker, on this job I'm paid to answer to this little one." He nods at Willow.

"We could leave now, and be in Phandalin well before sunrise," Willow says. "But it won't do us any good to get there so early. The town master might be willing to rouse himself to receive us, but he won't be able to do anything for Gundren until tomorrow morning anyway. So perhaps we should get some rest now and be ready to leave by midnight."

She looks around at the rest of the party. "How do you all feel? Can we go on now, or should we rest here for a few hours?"

Zhaquadan says "let's rest here until morning"while he loads what he can from the cart to the wagon.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:46, Wed 16 Mar 2016.