Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #2

Session #1 can be found here. 

Where we last left off, the ragtag party of irregular people had escaped a pack of wolves to the roof of an old log-cabin from where they finished off the few wolves trapped inside the now burning cabin.
The first few rays of the rising sun painted the scenery bright orange, complimenting the flames that were slowly consuming the cabin as our group collected themselves and started to asses the situation.

Current party members:
Angelo, magic-user with partial amnesia.
Claude Vursk, a fighter in search of a different missing girl from his own village.
Thrallmar Righthand, a dwarven cleric who is now looking to regain his honour after cowardly playing dead to avoid being torn apart further by the wolves.

Blue's player couldn't join us for the session due to sudden work things, and Dron's player likewise had to drop from the game entirely due to scheduling changes with their job situation.

New Day

As soon as the situation seemed to have calmed down and there were no wolves to be seen around, Dron took a mad dash somewhere into the woods towards the way the group had come from. Not everyone is made to handle violence and danger, and some men simply snap under pressure when the possibility of one's own death becomes more than real.
Not answering any shouts from the rest of the group or turning back, Dron disappeared to the forest. 

The party decided that since they hardly got any proper rest during the night they would rest now in the morning since it was still early enough for them not to waste all of the remaining hhours of daylight and with that everyone laid down for some well deserved rest while tending to their wounds the best they could.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing for his leg that one of the wolves had made a bleeding mess out of and rest of the wounded used up the healing salve they had found from James' little cabin of hunting gear in hopes that the combination of patching up the wounds the best they could, a six hours of sleep and rest and the salve would atleast alleviate the pain.
Claude who decided to attempt his best skinning and butchering the wolves for pelts and meat noticed that Dron had even dropped his backpack as he fled back towards Talen, and thus Marvin the henchman was given a bit more convenient way to carry some of the surplus equipment as well as the few scraps of meat that weren't completely ruined by Claude's crude attempt at cutting off eatable chunks from the wolves as well as the bloodied pelts.

Having recovered a bit from their nightly encounters, the sun had climbed all the way to above them indicating that it was closer to mid-day as the group finally set out to follow the faint trail through the woods in hopes of finding James as well as his daughter.
Since there was no obvious trail leading anywhere from the cabin it took a bit, but noticing more weird symbols etched into the trees and deciding to follow them Angleo, Claude and Thrallmar as well as Blue and Marvin folowing behind them came upon a large open area as the trees became sparser and sparser as well as started to grow more withered. What everyone saw extending in front of them was a bog covered in shades of brown moss and murky water, and standing alone in the middle of the swampy land, a lone tree looking nearly as twisted as the remains of the table Angelo's misfired spell had bent when he was trying to barricade the front door against the wolves last night.

The Swamp

Seeing no tracks leading left or right, and neither more symbols carved onto trees the party surmised that to stay on the tracks they would have to wade through here.
Testing the ground ahead with a branch snapped from a nearby tree the bog proved rather unstable for footing as just from the edge of it there was a large variance of spots where sometimes it would only be ankle deep, sometimes up to one's knees and in worst cases even up to their waists which for Thrallmar already meant that such depth would be near impossible to wade through as he'd be up to his shoulders in the muck.
Deciding to hopefully mitigate some risk of the dwarf drowining, Claude suggested tying a rope between him and Thrallmar and this idea was quickly extended to cover the whole group.

The trek through the swampland was not completely uneventful even if ignoring the wet moss, roots and animal bones sticking into everyone's boots and making the travel difficult, as passing the lone tree sitting in the middle of the swamp Thrallmar felt a weird tingle in his neck almost as if being watched and it was from this point onwards as they were halfway through the swamp that proceeding forwards became increasingly difficult.
Now not only was it the muck and dead moss pushing against their feet and making it difficult to shove ones feet forwards through this foul soup that was slowing the group down, but it felt like the roots running through the swamp were actively trying to grab onto their feet and any time they would come to a halt they would slowly but surely start to sink in where they were standing.

Only quarter of the way to go and it was becoming a proper feat of strength to push forwards when Claude who was the first in their line of rope connecting between the members of the party fell face first into the brown waters. With nowhere to grab save for the rope connecting him to the rest of the group it was a struggle for Claude to push and pull himself up again as he emerged from the swamp retching up whatever foul water he might've accidentally swallowed.
Assessing the situation, Claude was now properly stuck. No amount of pulling up his legs worked as everyone watched him slowly sink deeper and deeper, his waist lowering down so that the rope tied between Claude and Thrallmar was now resting straight rather than pointing upwards from Thrallmar's waist.
Not falling into a state of panic everyone started puling on the rope tied around them and with considerable effort Claude first stopped sinking, then slowly but steadily getting dragged up before flying backwards towards the group accompanied with a loud popping noise and shlurping as whatever muckus had been pressing against him rushed to fill the space he had been occupying a moment ago.

Taking a moment to think their options, the party concluded that they'd bring out the grappling hook which they had used earlier to climb away from the wolves that had attacked them at the cabin and would use it as an anchor to pull themselves forwards. Someone would throw it as far as they can and hopefully manage to catch onto a tree so that instead of having to push themselves through the swamp they could rather pull themselves forwards, and following along their plan some gruelling moments later everyone reached the dry and stable land safely.

Gnarled tree in the middle of the swamp

Other moments of note during their travel through the woods include:

• Spotting a bear and it's cub in the distance while carefully avoiding the animals.
• Coming across a cliff atop which they found a very deliberately built campsite that had been trashed.
• A completely un-eventful night of rest with a beatiful sight from atop the aforementioned cliff overlooking the forest.
• Finding some supplies stashed inside a hollowed out tree including, a knife, few arrows and packed cured meat.
• Coming across the corpse of James the hunter by another cliff-face with a crude spear sticking out of him. They picked a ring he was wearing with them.
• Climbing up the second cliff and finding two discarded spears along with several small footprints scattered and disappearing into the forest.
• The forest growing more sparse and thre being no signs of wildlife safe for the occasional mosquite and a flock of ravens.
• Finding a hot spring, hearing the splash of water and upon getting closer noticing wet footprints going away from the spring.
• Arriving at a lone stone house in a clearing in the forest with a small tent and two campfires atop which black pots were steaming.

The House

When approaching the clearing the first thing the party noticed was this old stone cottage with hay roofing. In front of the house stood a small teepee-like tent made of animal skins along with two campfires atop which pots were hanging. The teepee and two short pieces of fence formed a half-circle in front of the house and bit further away from the bits of fence were two spots in the ground that were covered in leaves but not in the way that someone might rake leaves into piles but instead looking like they were very deliberately spread out as a thin layer.

Not daring to get much closer from the treeline, Thrallmar approached just enough to be able to toss one of his empty lamp oil containers towards this campsite to see if he could evoke any sort of reaction. As the glass bottle flied over and landed near one of the pieces of fence and shattered upon impact with ground the party stood there, waiting for any signs of movement, but in vain as there was no indication of whoever might be here.
Having no other indication of someone possibly being in the small camp built around the house or in the house itself other than the two still burning campfire the ground decided to carefully approach. Wanting to see what these suspicious spots of leaves on the ground are, one of them snapped a branch off a nearby tree to brush some of the leaves away with, revealing a dirt pit the depth of 1.5 metres.

House and it's surroundings

Now reaching the camp while being wary of any more better hidden traps the group investigated the surroundings wondering if this might've been one of the hunter's camps in the woods.
Poking their heads into the teepee they found two figures huddled together at the back of the tent, both clad in furs and one of them wearing a deer skull without it's antlers. The other figure, the one with no deer skull, seemed to be a young girl not much older than maybe ten years.
Trying to talk to these children(?) the party heard the loud growling of a bear from somewhere inside the house.
Turning around and preparing for having to either fight or flee from a bear, another small roughly human shape covered in furs stood in the doorframe of the building wearing a bear skull and tossed over it's back was a bear skin with it's front claws still attached that the creature was holding on to. It roared again like a bear would. Not like a person imitating a bear, but like an actual bear was stood in the doorframe.

Before it managed to do anything further, everyone jumped in together to tackle this creature to the ground!
Angelo was the only one who got a proper grasp of it while everyone else either couldn't get a good enough hold or were aiming for where the creature had been standing before Angelo jumped into it and the two were sent into the house with Angelo laying atop this bear skin wearing thing.
Even though it's frame was small and Angelo was quite literally laying on top of it with all his weight, with a mighty roar he was sent flying against the doorframe as the creature stood up, followed by Thrallmar's pistol shot clipping right through it's shoulder which Claude then promptly followed up with a sharp stab at it's ribs. Angelo too tried to finish it off as the creture stumbled backwards and fell on it's knees but even in it's weakened stage it managed to dodge the hasty slash of the stumbling mage.
It was at this moment that two more of these things ran in through the half-crumbled back wall of the house both too clad in animal skins and one wearing a deer skull with small antlers and the other wearing a wolf skull.
Both of them yelling variations of "Jacob, no!" as they ran to shield the bear skull wearing one with their bodies.

The combat came to a sudden halt as the things spoke human words down to a point that Thrallmar ended up offering to heal the one that the group had wounded. A lot of persuasions of letting the party help Jacob were had and these creatures (people?) reluctantly accepted while Jacob kept gruntling things about them bieng adults and thus should not be trusted.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing on Jacobs wounds as everyone was asking what was going on in here. Apparently this was a group of children who had gone to the forest to play since they didn't like adults telling them what to do and had claimed a witch's house for themselves. The kids had not seen said witch anywhere but looking around the insides calling it a witch's house was not a big stretch of imagination with the top shelves still having vials, jars and bottles of different colours as well as some wet specimens like lizards, rats or small birds and a large map of what one might've assumed to be of constellations.
Angelo got a permission to look around the place on the condition that he wouldn't take anything since this house now belonged to the children. Looking around there was not much to see but one thing that caught his attention was a red book which contained some sort of a runic language he couldn't quite read. The text itself didn't contain any spells, he checked with his magic but checking the book itself there seemed to be something magical with it.

Further discussions with the children led to the party finding out that it had indeed been them who had killed James the hunter and even eventually got them to admit to having Bell, the hunter's daughter that they had been looking for.
They were lead to cellar of the house where she was being kept and after being showed her father's ring she went along with the party without much further issues.
Now having achieved their objective, the group started making their way back towards Talen. With the remaining hours of daylight they had left they managed to make their way up to the swamp before deciding to camp out the night. 

Afterword

Cramming four hours of a session into one blog post truly does seem to take up a lot of space even with some stuff glossed over. Maybe I should learn to simplify the more detailed descriptions of what happened as they're now pretty much going over everything in those scenes moment by moment for the most part.

Depending on how you're counting time they now have either reached the time limit of three days that Blue was given, or they have one more day to make it back. Only one way to find out ;)
The group also decided to camp out next to the swamp after atleast some of them had pretty much been convinced that the tree sitting in the middle of it was very much evil so we'll see how their night goes next time.