The night proved to be rather crisp. We set our ambush early in the evening, perhaps a bit too early. Turalyon had selected a tree close to the trail as his ambush site, and after couple of hours had fallen asleep on the branches. Antoni manned the southern platform until cold drove him (together with Dragan) to light the fire and to sample some greenish liquid they had found from the camp. Dragan, had loitered near the campsite, claiming he was skulking, before he abandoned the whole ambush thing and went to light the campfire (the sampling of alcohol was propably his idea). Only I and Tyrillia maintained vigil thru the evening, and even we were considering taking turns keeping watch.

Bandit finally appeared (three or four hours after we had set our glorious and professional ambush). They were in high spirits and didn't expect anything. They even waved greetings to Tyrillia, who waved back, bandit-like. Then the bandits died, mostly. I began the archery barrage, and at most couple of minutes later all was over. Only Dragan had suffered some cuts, nothing too serious. In hindsight, maybe lighting the fire was a good thing, bandits might have been bit suspicious if their camp (where their comrades were supposed to be) was dark.

Our little herd of horses grew, and we had prisoners, brothers, or so the talkative one claimed. Didn't bother to check the veracity of the claim. They spoke of a fortress of bandits somewhere to south, on the shore of the lake. And they claimed the Staglord, our local robber-baron, was a monster with head of a stag and great skill with bow. I think this fortress needs to be scouted soonish, to be able to plan how to storm it.

The next morning Dragan attempted to give orders around the camp, to direct people at various tasks. I ignored him. We gathered horses (and liberated the wagon, which had been on the trail) and set to Oleg's, for it was necessary to deliver our prisoners there, and to check if Kermit (Kerbal, Kerbit?), our previous guide/prisoner, had given any trouble to Oleg.

He hadn't. Oleg had received some guardsmen, who thought Kerbal needed to hang. The captain of the small guard detachment (Kesten Garess, why does this family name seem familiar...?) introduced himself and proclaimed he would see to the safety of the tradepost. No objections there. He also stated he would hang any bandit he could catch. Like he would catch any, sitting in the tradepost. Antoni was perhaps a bit upset about the hanging, and it manifested as a bit peevish behaviour. Before Oleg grew completely mad with him, I took Antoni off to see our most recent prisoners off. We spared them because, I don't know, they had behaved well while prisoners and since Kerbit(?) hadn't made it, I felt obligated to at least save these two. Hopefully I won't regret this.

While at Oleg's, it became clear we were the local handymen, for everyone had something which needed our attention. Nothing too urgent, but something we should look into if we get the time and opportunity.

Kesten told me about some former companion of his, who had betrayed him, and lived somewhere in the riverlands. While I couldn't promise to catch the villein, I did agree to keep my eyes open, for the reward was decent. And if Kesten is to guard the tradepost, might be good to keep him on good terms.

Svetlana pleaded Tyrillia to find her some moon radishes, for they might soothe Oleg, who was feeling stressed for all the happenings lately.

Oleg pleaded Dragan (I think it was Dragan, not sure though) to find Svetlana's wedding ring, which had sentimental value.

Some other bounties had been delivered to tradepost as well.

• Some pig needed to be killed.
• A weird taztlwyrm or some such, was also in need of killing.
• Kobolds had been troublesome.
• And our prisoners had told us of some mites, which had behaved like magpies and stolen from bandits.

We stayed the night at Oleg's, and made some plans about exploring the region. Like proper explorers.

Trying to keep track of all that was requested of us, we began our careers as cartographers. We headed first to where the elves had been ambushed (for we had promised to Turalyon we would seek the elves). Scouting the vicinity and when a trail was found to southeast we followed it. I have summed our findings here:

• Quite close to the ambush site we found the remains of one elf. A kinsman of Turalyon. His body was left there, apparently local elves just let wildlife to eat their dead.
• a cave, suitable for gold mining (or sheltering in the winter)
• a bush, of some plant which may be useful to alchemists, but proved hard to pick
• a lair of a pig, it was killed without much trouble (Dragan took some serious beating, but avenged himself by killing the pig. Which was already mortally wounded by yours truly).
• We saw some kobolds, but they were on the wrong side of the river, and fled.
• Antoni was beset by a spider. The spider was slain.
• We found the moon radishes, and some kobolds. We attempted to pick the radishes without harming the kobolds, but it didn't work. So we killed the kobolds and took their radishes.

Upon returning to Oleg's we met another traveller, Jhod Kavken (?), who claimed to be a priest of Erastil and promised to pester his god for our favour if we found a misplaced temple/grove of Erastil and secured it. The temple is guarded by a bear, of immense size and foul demeanor.

Nodding to the priest, I added his task to our list.

- I took the liberty to write some details Gavril really has no clue of, but which should be documented nevertheless. Like Turalyon sleeping on a tree, or Dragan's professional behaviour while laying the ambush