Finally, our adventurers had a moment to rest under the heavy branches of the giacchi tree. They applied bandages, did some stretches, and laid down to get their first winks of sleep since the evening before their heist. Everybody took their turn at the watch, most of which proved uneventful. Until a curious little High Elf known as Gugu Gidget heard footsteps outside their shelter.

She took a peek outside and spotted a pair of boots making their way with haste through the forest, no feet or legs or torso or person in general attached to the boots. Some might approach a pair of strange, self-propelled boots with caution. Some aren’t Gugu Gidget. She charged the boots. It took a couple tries, but she caught up with them and wrestled them on to her own feet.

The boots scampered off, with Gugu in them. Try as she might, she couldn’t slow them as they tromped through the woods on the same path they had walked before. Sven, her partner on the watch, heard her shouts and bounded out of the giacchi tree after her, waking the rest of the crew in the process.

Sven, a much larger, much hardier, much more lizard man that Gugu, caught up with her, and tackled her to the ground so that the boots could no longer carry her away. The group convened, and decided that perhaps letting the boots lead them might not be such a bad thing. So, on they continued, Gugu marching to some unheard tune.

Before long, they passed their last tree and exited the woods into a boundless field of wheat. The stalks caught the watery yellow light of the rising sun in front of them as the boots kept on schleppin. Eventually, Gugu grew tired, and Orophor decided to take a turn in the boots. He disliked it almost immediately. But the group got distracted, as they were getting hungry and spotted a cart making its way down the road beside the field they were trampling. So Orophor continued in the cursed boots until finally, the farmer whose cart it was pitied him and tackled the wood elf himself.

Said farmer turned out to be a great help to the party. He introduced himself as Pritch Pratchett, traveling to Daros with his son Ratchet Pratchett to sell their wheat. Orophor and Tenli cut a deal with Pritch to feed and bathe them at his home, paying 1 gold to cover the cost if bandits killed his son and stole his wheat.

While the weary assassins of Tergid Vexman luxuriated in their baths and ate their fill, they got to know a bit about Pritch’s kids: Garrett, Hackett, and Jackett Pratchett. They also spoke with his wife, Gary.

Well fed and cleaned up, the party decided to go see Pritch’s neighbor, farmer Dan. Pritch accompanied them so as to make introductions, and when they arrived, they found Dan likewise quite helpful, if a bit slow in the mouth. As the most learned man in the wheat fields, he had several answers about the mystery the party was unraveling.

He told them about the village of Samso, which had been mostly abandoned during the war. But, with the truce after King Thadd’s death, Dan had heard the miners had returned and operations were starting back up.

For the questions he couldn’t answer – about the substance mined in Samso (Ice Stone), about ancient ruins, about a necromancer’s tower – he suggested making a pilgrimage to the Grand Library, an ancient structure not too far off the road to Samso.

Before the group left, Dan gave them a wink and a thank you for their part in killing a noble who had done nothing for the peasants but raise taxes and look down his nose at them. For what it might be worth, the farmers of the fields seemed appreciative of their bloody actions. He gave them a warning about patrols on the roads, and pointed them in the direction of horses at Tiny Timmy Tingle’s stables - a neighbor whose high falutin, noble-boot-licking attitudes got on Dan’s nerves.

So the party went and stole some horses. Beorn went in and tested the waters by communicating with one of the horses, who he’d later find out was named Courage. Beorn romanced them into the idea of gallivanting West with the party, and so the horses willingly helped steal themselves from the stables.

Newly mounted, the group made their way west. The pace was a bit slow owing to their lack of tackle for their steeds, but still, before sunset (which is a bit of an oversight by the DM - who is ret-conning their journey to this point to have taken 3 days), they reached a large homestead on the edge of the desert. There, they bargained for saddles, reins, and other tackle, as well as provisions to keep them watered and fed in the heat and sand of the desert, not knowing how long they might be out in the wastes.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

As they considered how to carry all the water they’d need, the shop tender, Mary, informed them that she knew of an heirloom of her neighbor which could hold a great deal of things inside it. A Bag of Holding, she called it, and offered to show them where her neighbor kept it for 50 gold.

Though the party had just looted a noble’s treasure horde, they bargained her down to 20 gold. Orophor paid her 10 gold on the agreement, promising the other half once she delivered the goods. Mary took them across the way to her neighbor’s house, rummaged around under his bed, and pulled out the bag of holding. Orophor and Mary traded the remaining 10 gold and the bag, then Tenli blinded this poor woman, Orophor snatched back his gold, and they laughed as they ran out of the room leaving her to stumble around not knowing whether she’d ever see again.

The party packed up their provisions and rode out from the homestead as fast as their mounts would take them. After they had put some distance between them and their victims, they bedded down to camp for the night.

And, again, for the sake of distance and scale, let’s go ahead and retcon this to say they did this twice.

As they sat around the campfire and munched down some beans from their stock of provisions, Beorn and Tenli began to wonder something. Since farts had brought them all together, could it be that Orophor and Gugu also had celestial flatulence? The group put this to the test, shoveling beans down their gullets.

Indeed, the sonorous flapping of the new group members’ butt cheeks could be understood by Sven to say “Westward” and “Knowledge.” And if Tenli took a deep whiff, she might’ve recognized the smell to be celestial.

Matter resolved, the group hunkered down for bed. During the night, the watch heard something on the edge of camp. Orophor, master sneak, crept up behind the something and took hold of it, tying it up.

The something was a small gnome, wrapped in bandages which seemed not to be congealed with blood, but more of a fashion choice. The little gnome spat and struggled against his captors. He introduced himself as Zindel and admitted, he had planned to rob them. But only a little. A gnome had to make a living out in the desert.

From the start, Orophor did not like this gnome. Cool bandage wardrobe or not, he wanted this little fella to suffer.

But first, somebody (Sven perhaps?) put two and two together and realized the would-be-bandit might be able to translate the correspondence Beorn had absconded with from Tergid’s rooms after the brutal monkey-murder. And translate it, Zindel did. Little did the party expect this seemingly important note to read: “I’ve never seen a cock as big as yours. It’s like all of the many meals you eat not only enlargen your belly, but also your genitals. I wait with bated breath and masturbated vagina for our next meeting. Your wife can suck my ass. - Cordelia”

His usefulness exhausted, Orophor gave Zindel a good kick in the chest, sending the 40 pound gnome flying. He landed somewhere outside the firelight and scurried off into the night. Tenli seemed a little bummed this kooky Zindel character couldn’t stay for longer, but she totally understood Orophor wanting to enact some wanton violence, as nearly everybody in the group already taken their chance to do so.

The party slept through the rest of the night peacefully. Their horses, however, did not. Upon waking, they noticed one of the horses – Persephone, Uncle Iroh’s steed – was missing. Orophor nearly popped a blood vessel when he realized what happened. The party mounted up and set out to hunt down a gnome.

They pursued him across the desert, Gugu putting her tracking skills to use to lead the way. Once he came within sight, the race was on in earnest. As they closed the gap, Orophor readied his bow. He took a shot. It missed. He took another. It hit – Persephone. The horse toppled to the ground, throwing Zindel through the air.

The gnome’s small mass allowed him to fall without injury, and he slithered off into the sand. Tenli and Orophor dismounted and followed his tracks, finding him in just enough time to watch him hop down a hole in the sand.

Tenli, empathizing deeply with Orophor’s blood lust, handed him a bottle of fire oil. Bombs away. Orophor dropped the lit incendiary down the hole. They all heard a quick series of gnomish shrieks. Then they smelled bbq.

Butchering complete, Tenli spoke Healing Words to Persephone, and the horse’s arrow wound closed up stronger than ever. Everybody remounted without a word of remembrance for the poor gnome who just wanted to survive out in the desert, and rode on to where Dan had told them they could find the Grand Library.