Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #3

For those wanting to start from the beginning:
Session #1
Session #2

Last time the party had made significant progress on their mission to find the missing hunter and his daughter, rescuing the girl from this weird bunch of kids living in the woods and starting to make their way back out of the forest towards Talen to return the girl to her family.
They made good distance on their way back but decided to camp out the night next to the swamp that they had painstakingly waded through a day before.
And that is where we pick up from...

Current party members:
Angelo, magic-user with partial amnesia who had identified a book kept by the children to be magical even though it contained no spells.
Claude Vursk, a fighter searching for his village's missing girl who had been hoping to find her here.
Thrallmar Righthand, a beardless dwarven cleric who had shot and healed one of the children living in the woods.

Blue's player unfortunately couldn't make it for the session this time either which led to certain events having to be slightly postponed as a lot of people are still looking forwards to how they'll play out with Blue being able to actually have a say in what happens with him going over the timelimit given to him by Thackerey.

The swamp and the camp

So, heading back with the missing girl with them our group decided to pitch their tents and sleep the night in order to rest their bodies and not get lost in the woods during night. They unfortunately decided to do so right next to the swamp they had crossed earlier which soon proved to have maybe not been the best of ideas. 
Claude was taking the first watch when towards the end of it he started hearing rustling coming from the camp, and moment later witnessed Thrallmar, Angelo as well as their henchman Marvin crawling out of their tents half awake and slowly making their way towards the swamp. Claude swiftly decided that something was not right here and dashed to Angelo to shake the magic-user awake.
Angelo woke up standing in the middle of the camp with half of his clothes still back in his tent with no idea why he was there and not sleeping, and the two promptly proceeded to wake the other sleepwalkers.
Thrallmar was caught by Claude just as he was about to dip his still bare toes into the murky water of the swamp. As Claude had approached the dwarf from behind, the first thing Thrallmar saw upon waking up was the silhuette of a human figure writhing in the middle of the swamp where the tree had stood during day and burning with bright flame. Shook by this sight, he immediately resorted to pointing his pistol towards the middle of the swamp and letting out a shot.
If anyone or anything near the camp had not yet been awake, they sure as hell were now with the gunshot still ringing in Thrallmar's ears as he loudly exlaimed that there is a devil out there on the swamp. Thrallmar trying to frantically explain the situation to others alerted Angelo to the fact that he too could see this burning figure in the middle of the swamp.

Deciding that it was too dangerous to stay here the group quickly packed up the camp and hurried on away from the immediate vicinity of the swamp, only the way they had come from was on the opposite side of the swamp and the forest was growing darker and darker by the minute. The only way was to skirt around the swamp by following it's edge which in the dark was really the only distinguishable path the could make out in the forest.
The operation didn't go that smoothly though even if they did manage to stumble their way through the dark to the other side of the swamp as on the way they found themselves going through a brief section of the forest with all sorts of assortments of bones hanging from the branches as well as from vines snaking their way up the trees and wrapping around even more bones. It was as if the entire forest here had grown around this graveyard that was suspended some seven metres above them among the branches. Luckily nothing more horrible than merely spotting this weird airborn boneyard happened, Thrallmar affixed some candles to his shoulders to further ward off the darkness and kept muttering some sort of prayer as they moved. Occasionally glancing back at the swamp Angelo and Thrallmar had stopped seeing the burning figure out there and could only anymore make out the twisted silhouette of a lone tree in the middle of the swamp.

Beyond the swamp

Having reached the other side of the swamp the party spend a moment fumbling through the dark to find the exact, or even the approximate, path they had taken when coming from the other way but in the darkness it's not really that easy to tell directions or if that particular set of trees looks familiar or not even with the light of lanterns.

Traversing the darkness further away from the swamp the group would keep occasionally spotting this weird shadow just by the edge of the light of their lanterns. It would be there, looking somehow heavier than the other bits of darkness and when approached it would always manage to stay right at the edge of their light. Thrallmar once again leaned to his trusty pistol to solve the problem after trying to chase for the shadow in vain, not being able to shed any light on it. A shot rang out in the darkness accompanied by the sound of birds suddenly taking off from nearby trees and the shadow almost looked like it was stumbling. Nevertheless, the denser spot of darkness stayed where it was.
Another attempt at trying to shed light onto the figure, another shot into the darkness, and the group heard something heavy fall on the groud accompanied by snapping of twigs and rustling of the underbrush of the forest. It was at this point that everyone decided to rush in and found what exactly the shadow that had been haunting them for a while now was.

Rushing in with their weapons at ready, the group found a large brown bear laying on it's back between some bushes. The bear had two gunshot wounds on it's front but still it was just laying there, looking pathetic and letting out next to no sounds at all.
This changed the entire approach of the party, everyone dropping their intents of violence and wondering if they should just shoo the animal away. As they were discussing on how to handle the situation, the bear slowly tried to crawl back onto it's feet while still not trashing about or growling, just pathetically trying to push itself back from laying there on it's back with two slowly expanding stains of red blood forming on it's chest.
Thrallmar ended up sacrificing his bedroll to improvise some bandages while the others wrestled the bear to a sitting position so that the dwarf could fight the bandages on it. Being the selfless man of god, Thrallmar even sacrificed the alcohol he had stuffed to his pack to try and further cleanse the wounds. The bear tried to back away and swipe the dwarf off with the alcohol stinging in it's wounds, and the group could swear it was cursing uder it's breath.
It was now decided for the party what they had already been wondering about, this must've been one of the kids back from the witch's house. "I have not just shot this same kid three times have I?" protested Thrallmar as the party was laying out their tents and starting a new campfire, having decided that they were far enough from the swamp and that they wanted to nurse the bear as it was not exactly acting hostile.

The following day

Rest of the night passed uneventfully and in the morning the brown bear that had been bandaged up and sleeping was nowhere to be seen, and a familiar looking child wearing furs, a bear skull and almost comically too big bear skin wrapped over him with his hands slotted into where it's still intact front claws were.
Some discussing was done about what to do with the kid and they eventually decided on needing to make sure he gets healed up before letting him go to back to the forest by himself, and managed to talk the boy to coming with them as they were to set out back to Talen.

On their way back the group passed by the log cabin they had spent their first night in only to find it almost completely burnt down. A grim thought crossed their minds what with having fought off the wolves during night, and this boy they were now carrying with them also having appeared as a bear during night, but they quickly decided to not dwell too much on the thought. What they had fought off was a pack of wolves, nothing more and nothing less, and further contemplations everyone would keep to themselves. Thrallmar did check the wolfpelt he had skinned off one of them just in case he was hauling around a skinned human but much to his relief it did turn out to still be a wolf pelt.

Nothing else of importance really happened on the journey back save for Blue mentioning this weird feeling of being watched that he couldn't quite explain, and by afternoon they were out of the forest.

Back at Talen

It was decided that the bear kid could not be taken to the village proper, especially not with Blue's assigned watchman still in town. Claude and the kid were left to camp out in the woods where he kept an eye on Jacob, the weird boy living in the woods and clad in a bearskin and wearing one's skull to mask his face.
In the village Angelo and Thrallmar first went to return the hunter's daughter to her mother, as well as deliver the news about the hunter's death. They were presented with a key to the hunter's shack for reward since his wife was too poor to really offer any other sort of reward and she wouldn't really have much use for it now that James was not with her anymore.

After returning the child, next up was conforting mister Thackerey about the time limit he had set before he claimed he would consider Blue as having ran away and come for his head.
This went rather smoothly, almost as if the man had been waiting for it. As soon as they approached the small chapel the village had they spotted Thackerey leaving from there and coming up to them, thanking Blue for so readily presenting his neck for the liberation of his head from his shoulders. He explained how he had already sent word to Falm, the closest major city, for them to send over some men to come gather Blue so he could be put through the proper procedures for breaking his mission of penance.
Being a man of the church himself, Thrallmar managed to negotiate himself a chance at going to Flam with Blue in order to defend him, ending up signing a proper agreement for it according to which he would not be to leave Talen untill departing towards Falm with Thackerey, Blue and their escorts.
Claude on the other hand had been slowly building up rapport with the boy as the two had been left to camp out in the forest, deep enough for no prying eyes to notice.

Other than that the rest of the session consisted of re-stocking on supplies like food and water, replacing one destroyed bedroll as well as getting some more of the herbal salve they had found from the hunter's shack, which was found out to be produced by the wife of the village elder. Thrallmar also started learning about herbs and the procurement of said salves from her.

265xp + the ownership of the late hunter's shack and it's contents awarded to everyone for getting back to safety.