1.1 Justice and a Bottle

[slug]

Party
Annisetti - Female Elf, Fighter/Mage Thief
Brock Ironbright – Male Dwarf , Fighter/Cleric
Henry Underton  – Male Hobbit, Fighter Thief
Evolynne Yarskire  – Female Gray Elf, Mage/Thief
Alaric Black  – Male Human, Paladin

We borrow a pony and cart from the hobbits and put our bound prisoner inside for the journey to Keswick. A day into the journey we are ambushed by bandits and during the fight the shape shifting creature manages to fly away.  We capture two of the bandits thanks to Evolynne’s sleep spell and place them in the bed of the wagon so they can answer for their crimes in Keswig.
The next night Brock sees a creature on the edge of the camp skulking through the darkness, as he peers around more creatures rush in from a different direction but not before the alarm is raised and the party face hobgoblins. After the fight is over a captive hobgoblin says that they were approached by someone matching Keth’s description – that shape shifter is up to no good.
We arrive in Keswick and hand over the bandits to the guard, they tell us that there is a reward for captured bandits and they will let us know how much after these two have been questioned.  We get rooms at the Inn of the Cracked Mug and search out a mage or sage who can identify these items for us as well as directions to Eulyn Neal’s farm.
We head out to the farm the next day and Eulyn confesses to what he had done, but swears that he was approached by the elf/shape changer. We warn him that if anything else befalls the Hobbits we will be back and be letting the town guard know what has happened.
We go back to see the Gnomish mage who has identified the shield as a +1 variety which the dwarf takes and the bottle as being able to refill whichever liquid was last put in it and there is liquid now sloshing around. Not wanting to have a never ending herbicide we seek out a druid to ask advice.
The druid is just at the edge of town and Evolynne purchases herbal remedies while Brock gets a pony keg of hard cider. The druid points us towards other druids where the hobbits had originally got their antidote from, these might know how to cleanse the bottle.
While in town we haggle over horses and ponies, the prices seem steep and Brock reluctantly parts with his beer money for a stout pony.
We leave town and return to the hobbit village to give them their cart back, on the way we come across tracks of humanoids and decide to follow them. Eventually we find their camp and discover them getting up after sleeping during the day. We take out two roving groups of orc guards through missile fire and a spear wielding paladin, then charge down into the main encampment after the mages have cast sleep spells to reduce the numbers of combatants. Annisetti gets carried away by her fighting prowess and gets clubbed unconscious but the party win through.
Inside a tent we find two female human captives, they say there were more of them but the journey was long and the others were eaten. We tend to their wounds and are given food and clothes.
We return to the hobbit village of Rayburn and make plans to go to the druids grove, Roland is sought out, he has been their previously before he was ambushed by the giant. On the way to the grove we are attacked by a pack of wild dogs, we kill these off without a scratch to the party – this must be a first.
The druids agree to help us and direct us to a spring North of their woods, apart from some stirges wanting to drink our blood we get there in good shape and parley with the spirit folk who guard the spring.
The druids cleanse the bottle and we are on our way again.