Before any members of the party could act, the undead troll they woke lashed out at Kerath, bringing him down from full health to unconscious. Believing this was a fight they could not win, the party pulled Kerath’s unconscious body away from the troll, healed him, and then fled.
The party started to head back to the town of Oakhurst, with the rescued Sharwyn accompanying them and while carrying the bodies of her brother Karakas and friend Sir Braford. On their journey, they decided to spend the night in the woods. The party was surrounded in the dark by a pack of hungry wolves. Kerath recognized their leader, Keeva, who had a long scar along her flank from an old severe burn. Kerath was raised by wolves from infancy alongside Keeva, but a forest fire separated Kerath from his pack when he was still a young boy. He had always believed his entire pack died that day, so he was surprised to see that Keeva had survived. Though it had been many years, Kerath still remembered how to communicate to members of his pack, and so he spoke with her. He convinced Keeva and her pack not to attack by directing the hungry wolves to a small group of kobolds in a citadel a few miles back… Keeva and Kerath agreed to meet the following night to catch up.
The party entered town the next morning, and they brought Sharwyn to her mother’s home, along with the bodies of Sharwyn’s brother Karakas and fellow tree thrall Sir Braford. The mother, Kerowyn Hucrele, rewarded the party with gold and told them that if the noble Hucrele house could aid them in the future, it would.
The members of the party then ran errands around town. They met a human blacksmith named Diana Soots, owner of Soots’s Smithy, with whom they found it very difficult to bargain. They also met a rotund halfling named Helga who ran a general store called Roundbottom Trinkets. Finally, they met Helga’s ex-husband, Elmer, owner of Elmer’s Elixirs, who seemed to pine for his ex-wife.
In the evening, Kerath met with Keeva alone and offered her a pork chop as a gift. She thanked him but declined, saying that she was “full on kobolds”. Kerath felt a bit guilty about this at first, but this faded once he remembered how the kobold leader Yusdrayl wanted to take his head. Kerath invited Keeva to be his counterpart in upcoming adventures, and after deliberating with her pack overnight, she accepted the next day.
That same night, however, the party stayed at the Inn of the Four Winds in Oakhurst. Everyone enjoyed the wyvern cheese bites, and Qeew got hammered. Hugo rented all of the rooms in the basement from the innkeeper, a man named William, at a discount because something bad was rumored to be down there. William asked the party to take care of this problem for him.
When Qeew was ready to pass out, Hugo helped her downstairs to her private room and shut her door. He then noticed that a hungry “basement bear” was sizing him up; it had entered through a caved-in wall and was searching for something to eat. Using food carried by his Mage Hand spell, Hugo led the bear with Kerath out to the woods where they seemingly convinced it not to return. Qeew slept through the whole ordeal.
On their second day in town, the party attended the funerals of Karakas and Sir Braford. There they met Mayor Milnet, who thanked them for their service to the town. He was initially disappointed to learn that the supply of magic fruits was depleted now that the Gulthias Tree was destroyed. However, once he learned that the twig blights attacking the locals were sprouting from the fruits’ seeds, he thanked them again.
Mayor Milnet then asked the party to assist with a difficult task: to help establish a trade route between Oakhurst and the nearby city of Blassingdell. Blassingdell was a mining town about three days walk to the north and was significantly larger than Oakhurst. Milnet had been trying to increase trade through collaboration with someone named Snuff Pagus, whom he described as Blassingdell’s lead trade merchant. Their efforts were thwarted repeatedly by a band of orcs living in a stronghold near a place called Stone Tooth, not far from Blassingdell.
Centuries ago, the stronghold was built by the dwarf Durgeddin the Black, a master blacksmith, with the aid of other dwarves fleeing from the ancestors of these orcs. Orcs eventually drove out the dwarves and killed most in a conflict called the Smith War. It was rumored that the stronghold at Stone Tooth still contained some of the great weapons crafted by Durgeddin long ago.
The party agreed to help eliminate the orc threat, and they began preparing for their journey to Blassingdell.