Last Friday I recounted the story of how the Bearfoot Marauders came together as a party. Last night we had our second session… and things were interesting. The party marched back to town ¹ and made their way back to The Drunken Fish just as darkness was setting in. The party was greeted as people of significant, and Finwhat muttered, “OK, we are not telling them we only hit a toe.” Gibeon, who had been brought down to two hit points in their bear encounter, entered the main room and was treated with something he wasn’t used to—respect. The dwarf was not, however, able to enjoy this respect because he was in shock ². While people patted him on the back, Gibeon just stared off into space.

It turns out the bear the party confronted is known as “Old Sally,” and she’s been known to, well, eat people. Anyone who survives an encounter with the bear is considered either brave or very luck because, “She’d bite yer face off just asoon as lookatcha!”

As the crowds gave the party some space Finwhat sat at that bar and said, “What are we doing? We’re terrible at this.”

At that moment the Bearfoot Marauders became spiritual kin to the Mystery Men.

There was much fun the rest of the night. As Gibeon recuperated, Finwhat headed to the local potion shop to get some healing potions ³, and the next day the group headed to the library to see if they could find out any information about the old forest that might give them some clues to what had emerged in the woods. This led to an awkward moment when Garrett, who is not a pillar of stability, decided he wanted to marry the librarian. Nitro had to escort him from the library before the guards got called, and soon after the rest of the party was “encouraged” to leave ⁴.

The group is bit of a hot mess.

At any rate, armed with some knowledge that there were some ruins in the forest, the party headed back to where they’d encountered Old Sally ⁵, and proceeded to descend into a hole they discovered. The adventure proper had begun.

In their first foray into the underground lair the party triggered a trap ⁶, were freaked out by a skeleton lying on the floor in another room ⁷, and interrupted a group of kobolds as they ate a meal. When the door to the dining hall kicked open I rolled for surprise, and everyone passed except for Gibeon—who had to spend a combat round sputtering at the sudden appearance of monsters ⁸. The party rose to the challenge, however, and showed some good tactics as they tried to deal with the threat. Gibeon even managed to shake off his shock and marched into the room to face the creatures, whereupon he was stabbed by a sword ⁹. And that’s where we left things for the evening. The party was in a small room, they’d just defeated a group of Kobolds, and there were two doors they could take to proceed.

I can’t wait to see what they do next.