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It seems clear to me that this thing has started somewhere and that there's a good chance that something, or someone for that matter, has alienated the pixies, surely unknowingly. Anforthas says to his companions, then adds in a lower voice, This is worth being investigated. Maybe we should ask the loggers first to know their version of the story. It could be there's some sort of misunderstanding or even that someone is playing tricks on these poor workers. But if we don't do anything, the situation can only escalate.

"Fine points, Anforthas!" Earc replies as he turns to Blackjack.

"Where might we find these lumberjacks? Would you mind if we spoke with them before we headed out to explore?"

Blackjack shrugs and makes a non-comittal gesture all around him. "Take your pick."

"Aren't no misunderstanding, not," one of the nearby lumberjacks says loud enough for you to hear. The small group slides their drinks across their table to face you, and take it upon themselves to school you about these parts. "Them damned bugs is devils, is all. We aren't done nothing but mind our business and make a living right here. Never even lifted a finger onto a pixie before it, but in self defense only. You can't imagine what it is they done with old Leddy. Found him strung up in a tree by his entrails one morning, pixie-runes scratched all over his skin. There's no helping a bug what's caught by us, you can be sure of it."

onlyme wrote:Halfpint listens carefully, and asks Blackjack if he had any boundaries or markings for where his teams were doing their logging.
She then asks him what happened to Leddy.

Blackjack scratches his chin and thinks hard. "Well, we use the usual method. Up and down the river, 'bout a mile each way, leaving a third untouched to help with bringing new saplings in. Once we reach a mile out we work inland, hopefully along a stream since that makes it easier to carry the lumber to the river. Maybe a mile inland on either side of the river, no set boundaries. Then we come back and some fresh sapling should be ready to cut for small wood. Eventually, given time, I'd say we could farm four full miles in all directions, and that should sustain us."

Halfpint replies to the men.
" I doubt Pixies did that. They like to tease and prank. But, I've never seen them do that. You sure it wasnt something else trying to frame them? There's evil creatures all round I suppose."


She then thanks Blackjack for the recon, as she attempts to pencil in those 4 miles in the map she has.

"Cranky ain't the same as evil, anyway," says Lug.

He frowns at Blackjack and the loggers. "What you folks ain't getting is that you're destroying the pixies' homes. Of course they're pissed at you! You would be too if someone burned this town down. If you was any smarter than a log, you'd try to find a way to make the pixies your friends. 'Cause if you mean to fight all the critters of the forest, my money's on them. There's a whole lot more of them than you. And they got me on their side." Lug grins in a way that's not at all friendly. He sits up straight to show off his dragon armor and let the full "weight" of his statement—and his substantial bulk—sink in. "Any of you axe-swingin' yokels got something to say about that?"

Assuming no one is fool enough to jump up and attack him right there, he continues, in a gentler and less mocking voice. "Look, you're almost doing this right. You're taking down old-growth trees, and that's kinda a jerk thing to do. But you're also planting so you can make this whole thing sustainable. Glad to hear it. Thing is, some of them old-growth trees are pixie condos, and when you cut one down, a whole buttload of bitty elf-kin come out and make you suffer for it. So you can either keep losing loggers to pissed-off pixies, or—here's a crazy idea—find out which trees are full of pixies and leave them the hell alone. You get trees, the pixies get a place to live, and nobody has to die."

"Or, hell, keep doing what you're doing and find out what happens when a forest gets really mad. Your choice. Your funeral."

Lug chugs the rest of his beer. "So, when can we get out of here?" he asks Halfpint. "The conversation sucks."

Lug sure talks a lot more than he used to these days...

But, despite all that, Halfpint has a point. Hanging someone by their entrails seems to violent for a group of pixies to do. At least for what I've heard. I'm sure there's something else behind this. Besides, as far as we know, these lumberjacks didn't kill any pixie, right? We should check that out and maybe we could restore order in this place. You, Lug, have a way with woodland creatures, right? Who could do this better than you?. Saying the last sentence, Anforthas looks at Lug earnestly into the eyes.

"I defend 'em," says Lug, shrugging. "Don't mean I can talk to 'em."

Earc nods thoughtfully as he scratches the head of his Tundra Cat, which has now partially slipped out of his backpack.

"I agree; it doesn't sound like pixies. At least not like pixies that haven't been provoked or attacked." He turns to Halfpint, "We might explore that further to see what is going on? But it's up to you. Where should we go, Halfpint?"

Halfpint nods.

"Yes, I suspect we need to meet up with the Pixies and ask. Cant think of a better way.... So, how do we get to where you folks have seen 'em?"

Piers, taking a few moments to consider which spells he might request from Baudh before venturing into the forest, suddenly has an idea.

"Pixies are invisible, correct? So if we did happen to become involved in a dispute with them, they would have a significant advantage. Do we have any way to detect them, or make them visible?"

"I read a story, when I was a boy, about a cunning hero who threw flour over invisible opponents to reveal their position."

"I doubt they'd sell us the flour here, even if they had any". Piers takes a not-quite-distainful look around the inn.

"But do they have a sawmill? Could we collect sawdust to use for the same purpose?"

"Yeah, the watermill right outside the coach house here has a saw. Not as heavy duty as what we have at the proper yard downriver, but you'll find all the sawdust you want there."

The lumberjacks begin to grow red in the face at Lug's words. "The hell we leave them the hell alone, after what they done did! And anyone's a friend of theirs ain't welcome here!" Chairs scoot back, sleeves roll up, knuckles crack. These men would in any other situation be considered the hulking muscle of the room—but right now they too drunk to see Lug's size advantage. Almost as soon as they are up, however, a massive fist drops onto the lead lumberjack's crown with a heavy WHUMP!, and he flops to the ground unconscious. The two ogres Aagrok and Kreek have already appeared out of nowhere and are standing behind the locals, cracking heads and dragging them across the floor by their collars. "GET THEM OUT OF HERE. I SAID NONE OF THAT HERE AND YOU KNOW I MEANT IT," bellows The Grizzly Woman, as she gleefully helps Aagrok chuck them all out the door. Kreek looks Lug up and down, contemplating his size and accoutrements, then says, "You not be bothered no more. They pick fight for last time tonight. You let Kreek know if you bothered again, we take care of it."

After the commotion dies down, Amistad brings up the pixies again. "You're right, of course. It doesn't sound like pixies at all, and whether they were behind Leddy's lynching, who knows. But that's only the worst of it—we've had slaughtered livestock too, some drawn up the same way, and those definitely were pixies, I can assure you that. I was in town at the time and ran them out while before they could get the Akshay's whole herd.

"Anyway, I'm not sure where you can find them. We first encountered them heading west of here, and it was like that for a while, they'd only get testy if we crossed the river. But now they seem to just pop up anywhere we cut, never quite in the same place twice." Amistad begins to fiddle with his ivory lion totem absentmindedly as he tells you this.

Rolls: PS: I'm preparing for this next semester's classes and, more importantly, my wife is due any day now, so I probably won't be updating much or at all this next week. That should also give Spearmint some extra time to decide whether to pick up Amistad before you guys set out.

Lug gives nods of respectful acknowledgement to the Grizzy Woman and the ogres. "Thanks," he says. "I coulda taken 'em all, of course. Might even have been fun. But it wouldn't be nice to make a mess of your place." Still, he resolves to watch his back when he leaves, in case the drunken axe-swingers hang around to try to settle a grudge. He almost hopes they do. He hasn't had a good brawl in ages.

He flexes his arms back and stretches his neck from side to side. "We ain't gonna find out what's up with the pixies by sitting here. But how're we gonna find 'em? Don't think we should try cutting down a tree to do it. Maybe we gotta go into the logging area and shout 'Yoo-hoo!'? Or, hey! I know! If we find the centaurs first, maybe they can tell us how to talk to the pixies!"

Piers makes a note to go to the sawmill in the morning and fill a large sack with sawdust.

Starbeard wrote: "Anyway, I'm not sure where you can find them. We first encountered them heading west of here, and it was like that for a while, they'd only get testy if we crossed the river. But now they seem to just pop up anywhere we cut, never quite in the same place twice."

Halfpint nods, and says to her fellow partymembers, "Sounds like we just head west, and they'll find us. "
She then asks him,
"Any other creatures or dangers you folks have found out there we should be aware of?

Starbeard wrote: PS: I'm preparing for this next semester's classes and, more importantly, my wife is due any day now, so I probably won't be updating much or at all this next week. That should also give Spearmint some extra time to decide whether to pick up Amistad before you guys set out.

Good luck with all that and Congrats (in advance?)

Starbeard wrote:Thanks! The baby arrived on Friday morning, a girl. As you can expect, the arrival has interrupted my posting schedule, but I have set a deadline to update this expedition on Friday, and for the next few weeks after that I will be reduced to 1-2 GM posts a week. Hopefully we'll be in a spot where the GM posts can keep the content moving enough that we don't stall too much.

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

Congrats again... Special times. It is amazing how fast they grow up.

And I have been so swamped, I have no problems with a slower pace for now.