The Danger Gang Makes A Bee Line Out Of Shushmashush
The Danger Gang wakes up with their new-found Ranger friend standing over them. Their bug mounts are dead. The ranger unzips his skin, and it's the shadow man Arap. They feel like fools for trying to advise him on how to break in to the Earthly Beauty's castle, even though they did advise him against it in general. So he throws them a bone, warning them that giant, four-eyed boars are coming to kill them. Then he disappears. Then the giant boars are there.
The fighters, armor-less, scramble up a tree and start using ranged attacks on the boars. Marty, Little Lord Hit-Points over here, stays on the ground and fights. He also makes some giant insects for fighting, and they do a pretty good job. Soon the boars are defeated and the victorious Danger Gang fries some bacon (Gershom does not partake). Marty hastily checks that the shadow is intact... and it does indeed appear to be.
The continue east towards the Drin, and while walking through a perfect place for an ambush, they are ambushed. A dozen hobgoblins suddenly reveal themselves, but only Marty, thinking about how awesome the shadow is, gets caught dumbfounded. With the advantage of riding beetles, eleven hobgoblins are cut down in short order, and the one remaining surrenders. Using Akhrum as a translator, the Gang presses the hobbo for information on what other kind of monsters they might have to worry about out in the mountains. They've already encountered most of them in one form or another, as it turns out, but there does seem to be one more menace to watch out for -- the Albanian version of vrykolakas. That's right folks -- level draining monsters on the random encounter table. Albania is kind of a crazy place.
They continue marching east until after a few hours they arrive just short of the banks of the Drin. Nearby, a lady leaps out of a tree. "Hey," she says.
"Hey, yourself," Marty replies in Dryish. The dryad explains that she just smelled something super important nearby and that the party needs to go get it, now. When the Gang hesitates for a moment she roundly charms the whole party... which is when Marty intimates he knows what she's getting at and they've already got it.
The dryad (whose name is Arbnor), gives them directions, which Marty cross-references with the Doodya through the cup. Apparently the Queen of the Dryads holds her court on the banks of the Marika, a river on the far side of Bulgaria, close to Thrace. To get there directly, the Gang must travel east through the Bulgar Empire about 200 miles and then through an additional 300 miles of evil forest.
"This news could be better," is what Martialis has to say about that.
They discuss the possibilities for their next stop. Ahkrem says he was headed towards Lake Ohrid to visit the Bulgar royal family, dropping off a present from...some guy? Yohannes? He was apparently wooing a princess there. Sounds like a good place to hide out. They flag down a boat going up the river Drynn. When they're about to board, Gershom notices they're being scryed on, so Marty whips up an Obscurement. They hop in the boat. En route, they receive a note via sparrow from Ferminus. It says that he and the circus are in Dorracheon. The Gang figures that Chow-Han will be able to read the intentions of those jerky priests and their lady murdering ways.
They're pretty close to their destination, so they hold up in some farmer's barn.
