We start at Oleg's after having captured the bandits who came to rob the place. The half-elf bandit who's the most helpful, Tomert aka Legolas, agrees to accompany us to the bandit camp. We sense motive on him, and get the impression he's trustworthy and trying to help. Then we spend a long time discussing whether we'll get there through the woods or go around through the plains. After joking about "LETS SPLIT UP", we decide to go through the woods, as the wolf seems likely to have better food hunting there.
As we approached the camp, around evening, we heard them drunkenly talking. One was up in a tower, ineffectively keeping guard. After lots of discussion we decided on a plan. Freya managed to get her wolf to run into camp, grab a bottle of booze, and run off. He did so, circling back to us, and a couple of the bandits followed him. We jump them, and the other three bandits, including the woman with the axes start towards us from the camp. Freya took a nasty sword hit, backed off and healed herself. The combat was pretty mobile, with people running all over the place. Still no gunfire from John or raging from Torgir, but Torgir did take two big hits, which TJ healed each time. The woman, after seeing most of the other bandits fall, lost morale and ran off, but Torgir ran her down. The last bandit surrendered, and after a little discussion, he and Tomert agreed to help us trick the last four bandits who were off hunting and would be returning sometime that evening.
Return they did, and after a few rounds and some difficulty, we intimidated them into surrendering without a fight. (With TJ finally pointing out Torgir's axe. "Have you seen that guy's axe?! It's horrible! I don't even want to see what he'll do with it, and he's on my side!") They helpfully pointed out their loot stash, and when asked about Svetlana's ring, said that it was probably in with a bunch of stuff that had been stolen from them by weird little blue guys, who Trshvk was able to ID from the description as mites. This was a dilemma, since we wanted to follow the mites' trail while it was fresh, but didn't want to waste time dragging the bandits on foot with us through the countryside. In fact, it was discussed to just kill them rather than be slowed by them on the way back to Oleg's, but given those consequences they swore they'd keep up with pony-speed.
Part of the stash included a box of 8 booze bottles for the Stag Lord, who's apparently quite the drunk. He expects them by the end of the month. Torgir drank one of the bottles that night. The next morning we decided to, in fact, split the party, and Freya and Pushistic headed off following the trail southeast, and the rest of us went back north. The bandits struggled a bit and took some non-lethal hustling damage, but we made it back to Oleg's a bit after nightfall.
When we got there, a group of 6 soldiers and their leader had arrived from Restov. They took charge of most of the captured bandits, but we had started to trust Tomert, and he agreed to stay on and work at Oleg's. The reward for capturing the bandits will arrive on Sarenith 11, along with a bunch of stuff we ordered, mostly basic equipment for TJ and bullet-making supplies for J. Selling off loot from the bandits to Oleg emptied his purse, and he still owes us 180 gp.
Along with the soldiers had come a cleric of Erastil named Jhod. He wants us to find an old lost shrine of Erastil in the woods. When we joked about it being a tatzlwyrm lair, he said no, but there's probably a crazed bear there. We tried to convince him to go adventuring with us, but he wouldn't although he agreed to provide his spellcasting services for life if we agreed to find and reclaim the temple for him. That day, we mostly sat around waiting slightly nervously for Freya to show up, and also staying out of the rain which fell on and off for most of the day. She eventually arrived, having found the lair under a huge tree on a hill about a day to the south.
The next day the weather was decent, and we headed south quickly, planning to explore the lair, and map and explore on the way back. Again we got there about evening, and there were no mites on the surface. Climbing down the rough walls of the entrance tunnel, we found two mites flinging caltrops at each other. Combat ensured, we won, but either the room didn't continue or we didn't feel like going down a level. Heading the other direction, we found one mite in a disgusting room filled with trenches, rotting stuff, 3 monster centipedes, and their eggs. We scared her off, and finished off the bugs with some pretty good teamwork - Torgir, Freya, and J each got one. With that combat done, we finished for the evening.
