Grimwood Forest

Roddy, Raef, and Sugar were tasked with a very important mission: recover some loot that Hansel had recovered and promptly had stolen from him. This mission sent them to Grimwood Forest, a known hangout of thieves and thugs, full of traps, treasure, and treehouses.

Immediately upon seeing the gang who’d stolen Hansel’s stuff, Roddy disguised himself as one of them and strolled directly up to their campfire. He pretended to be a friend of theirs, and after some wearing down, they bought it well enough to get drunk with him. Meanwhile, Raef and Sugar crept around the campsite -- Sugar invisible, Raef employing his fantastic stealth abilities, which soon failed him when he spooked the thieves’ horse. Luckily, he was able to calm it down without alarming them, and also surreptitiously slipped Roddy some more booze to keep the party going.

On the other side of the copse, Sugar found a treasure chest and cleverly picked its lock with a hairpin. Inside, she found a smaller chest. She abandoned this venture.

As she moved on, Raef slipped around the main treehouse and tried to climb its ladder. Unfortunately, while he avoided a bear trap at the base of the ladder, he did step on a branch and made a very loud crunching noise. The inebriated bandits didn’t notice, but the archer up above in the treehouse -- who had been watching these goings-on with suspicion -- spotted him and sounded the alarm. Raef thought fast and used his blur magic, and it helped him avoid several attacks while Roddy loudly protested that he was a friend. The bandits didn’t buy this one, so Raef hurried up the ladder to go after the archer.

Sugar, meanwhile, found a bridge across the river bisecting the campsite. She made it across, but it collapsed behind her, cutting her off from her friends. Hearing them in trouble, however, she ran along the riverbank and started yelling insults at the archer, trying to goad him into attacking her.

Everything happened at once. The half-orc down below followed Raef up the ladder, the archer took a couple shots at Sugar (completely missing), and Roddy was left with two other bandits around the campfire. That was when he discovered his new skill: deathly hugs.

While Raef fled from the half-orc and Sugar distracted the archer (first with insults, then with magic missiles), Roddy grabbed both remaining bandits in bear hugs and squished them to death. This new power was terrifying to all who witnessed it.

The archer finally hit Sugar, and she incinerated him, but Raef found himself cornered on the second floor of the treehouse, where he found another bandit who was playing at being a cleric. He got in a shot or two at the half-orc, but took more than he was able to give, then started back down with Sugar and Roddy offering what support they could. When he reached the ground again, Roddy confronted the half-orc, grabbing him in an embrace.

“Hey, buddy, listen. I just hugged two of your friends to death and you’re outnumbered. Maybe you should just surrender.”

The half-orc dropped his axe and agreed to sit quietly next to the fire until Roddy told him otherwise.

The gang dispatched the archer and cleric and went back to looting. Roddy called out the same threat, and when he entered another treehouse, the bandit inside threw up his hands in immediate surrender, and was all too happy to fork over a couple of healing potions and a treasure map before joining his friend by the fire.

Sugar, meanwhile, on the other side of the river, investigated another treehouse and found a sleeping wizard. The creaking ladder gave her away, and he jerked awake and threw firebolts at her until she left him alone. Raef and Roddy took some pot shots at him from their side of things, and after a while, Sugar finished him off -- freezing him solid. He tumbled out of the treehouse and shattered.

Success!

Roddy used mage hand to pass a rope over to Sugar so that she could rejoin them, but when she tried to climb across she fell into the river almost immediately. Raef gallantly dove in with the rope to save her, almost lost her again, and the two of them just managed to scrabble back up onto shore … the wrong side of the shore. Luckily, they were able to climb a tree and use a bridge connecting two treehouses to get back together, and Sugar led Raef over to the chest that had stumped her.

Inside it, he found another fucking chest.

He and Roddy tag-teamed it with lockpicks and a particularly large rock Roddy found for a while, while Sugar hung out and chatted with the bandits, seemingly under the impression that they were all friends now. It turned out the half-orc’s name was Griffin, and the human’s was Robin.

“Hey,” she realized, while the boys struggled fruitlessly in the background, “that’s your chest. Do you guys just have a key for it?”

“Oh, yeah, I totally have the key for that,” Griffin said, and, spotting Roddy, quickly handed it over. Inside they found a sizable gemstone, which Roddy pocketed.

Roddy shared the treasure map he’d gotten from Robin with the class, and after puzzling over it for a moment, he realized he actually knew exactly where it led. The gang moved out, tying up their new friends in the back of their own wagon -- where they also discovered Griffin’s puppy snoozing peacefully. Raef laid immediate claim to this puppy, which upset Griffin, but he didn’t dare say anything.

They recovered the lost treasure and headed back to the guild, where Ripley was too tired to deal with the fact that these people keep bringing home strays and basically waved them off with a, “You know what, fine.” Then it was off to the appraiser (which Roddy reluctantly paid for), and they divvied up the goods: Raef got a Ring of Animal Influence, but an argument broke out over the Glamoured Leather Armor. It turned out that Sugar wanted it, but only so that she could give it to her magic tutor:

Mishka.

Roddy argued with her for a while, then dragged her off to Hansel, who was in bed trying to recover from his earlier solo encounter with the bandits. He listened to their bickering for a while, and when he found out this armor could take on the appearance of any type of clothing, he commented that it probably *would* be a nice gift for Mishka, apparently completely missing the point Roddy was making. After Sugar brought it up, he reminded Roddy that Mishka had the ability to change his own appearance -- did it really seem like it would matter if he could change what his clothes looked like? Roddy grumbled but admitted that this was a good point, and Hansel told them to get out because they were making his concussion worse.

They left, but a moment later Roddy poked his head back in to try to sell Hansel the shield they’d picked up -- a Shield of Missile Attraction. It was worth six thousand gold, but he thought he might cut Hansel a deal on it.

“I already have a shield,” Hansel said.

“Yeah, but this one makes stuff hit you!” Roddy explained excitedly.

“Roddy … I know you’re doing your best, but why would I *want* that?”

Roddy guessed he hadn’t thought of it that way.