Everyone levels up. We feel determined!

Team Home Alone WTH?!
“The Bird Girl is telling the truth”. Ildan and Narcel’Uss return home, with J in tow, after pursuing their own ends. J was visiting her family, checking in on the critters. Everyone looks over the note, affixed to the door. They exchange a glance with raised eyebrows.

Entering the house, the team seeks the bird.

Bird Girl says everyone is “gone”.
Can she clarify?
“Girl in a box. Ren mad. Your ring is somewhere.”
J is confused. “Wait is Vani in a box?”
“No...”
Ildan speaks: “Dwarf?”
Bird girl perks up, “Yay. Dwarf! Ildan knows dwarf. Ildan knows Narcel’Uss’ bad man put girl in a box.”
It takes time to get it all sorted out, but eventually everyone understands what is going on. Kind of.

Meanwhile...

Team Mad, Mad and Mad
They are just walking, except Vani is skipping. Dorian turns to question Vani, trying to keep up with her as she bounces along the road. He tries to impress upon her the negative consequences of killing Lucien. “Do you like destroying people’s lives?”. She has trouble with this concept, understanding that Lucien is probably blackmailing lots of people and if they harm him, it will in turn harm others. He bribes her with chocolate and this has some effect. Ren wonders where the rest of the team is. Vani climbs the tree and puts some “TIP” markings in case the rest of the group comes along.

Team Home Alone
Narcel’Uss sees papers on the ground. It appears Bird Girl has been trying to write some accounts of her thoughts and findings on paper. As she reaches for them, to take a closer look, Bird Girl snatches them away yelling “No, no, no, no, no!” She tries to grab them but Bird Girl puffs up and looks very formidable. J brings everyone back on track and they argue about whether or not to look for the rest of the group. Narcel’Uss likes being the leader, but not when she has no one to lead, so they all go after the others.

Team MMM
They have made camp and are settled in, looking at the history book and eating some jerky. The book is called “The Unknown Emerald”. They all begin singing “This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends...(something about demons)”, a well known sailor’s song for avoiding ghost ships. Ren tells them about the ghost ship and how “you don’t want to be a ghost ship recruitee,” so you sing this song to convince them you are already dead.

Together At Last
The rest of the TIP comes up on Team MMM, first hearing the singing and slightly worried about the content of the song. Then, they hear the individual voices of the group and Vani improvising a guitar solo, and know its the TIP.
Narcel’Uss greets them with, “You sound terrible.”
They talk and explain the most recent events, so everyone is caught up, and J does a face palm. Dear god, what have they gotten up to??
They discuss the problem that is Lucien. How do they take him down without harming many others? What lies in his past that could take him down? Could they frame him for taking the ring? Or for anything, for that matter? There seems to be no easy solution. They go to sleep musing on this problem.

Night Watches
Ildan and Bird Girl do some insane poses. Narcel’Uss is disturbed and turns the other way while she trances. The night is otherwise uneventful.

The Morning
They have breakfast and Ren eats too many pomegranate seeds. She doesn’t seem phased the same way Dorian was when he just ate one.

They look over the notes they received. They appear to be written by a Pangol. Julia Pangol to be exact. They are notes about a tower as well as some scholarly notes copied from a journal about golem hearts. The heart of a golem must contain something precious. That could be something valuable (like gold OR uranium) but also secrets. It might be a lead box, so there may be no way to divine what is inside.

Mid-Day Discoveries
As they walk, a few members of the TIP (Vani, Ildan and Ren in particular) hear noises of fighting in the direction they are heading. They all prepare for the worst, J throwing a spell on the group that makes them super stealthy. Narcel’Uss casts a warding spell on Ildan that connects them in battle.
(side note: Narcel’Uss and Ildan owe the party $100 gold for the platinum rings they need to cast this spell).

They see some gnolls. No one in the party has ever seen one. Except Ildan. The gnolls are far from home, which is concerning. Ildan last saw them in the war, when they were used to raid towns and villages. He knows they are generally bad news. These ones appear to be well-armed though are not fighting anymore. There are the remains of some patrol or caravan that has been obliterated. It was quite a fight, there is evidence around that the party used magic to try to fight back.

Into the Fray...
Ren sees the clearing and the creatures, which she regards as monsters. She focuses and everyone sees something manifest around her. It is hard to pin down what it looks like, though it appears as though a ghostly wolf aura is the closest description. She runs in before anyone can do a thing about it. The TIP just can’t keep out of everyone’s business. Ren barrels out of the bushes and cleaves one in two.

Ildan dashingly dashes in and strategemally positions himself next to Ren, ready for battle. He bumps into the gnoll that Ren cleaved... and it falls in half with a disgusting wet “schlop” sound. Even the gnoll is surprised as it lays twitching in two pieces on the ground.

Vani is distracted by all of this and her knife throw goes wide.

The gnolls immediately attack, taking no time to adjust to the fact that they have to fight a new group. Some gnolls attack both Ren and Vani, who take damage but Ildan raises his shield just in time to rebuff the attack.

Bird Girl marks the leader of the group of gnolls and quickly fires off two arrows at once - stylish! They strike true.

Dorian tries to stick to the originally plan and stays sneaky. Without drawing too much attention to himself he peeks out and fires off an arrow too. It flies over Vani’s head and hits a gnoll.

Narcel’Uss notices they are wearing holy symbols, the sign of Nurzhan. Knolls are conquerors, so this choice makes sense. Narcel’Uss is slightly pissed off that these lesser beings are worshipping the same god as her. She fires off a deep purple, evil-looking, bolt of light and yells out a warning about how Nurzhan favours her over all others. This gets their attention.
While they are distracted, a lion bursts from the underbrush, roaring ferociously. A gnoll is so shocked that his swing is way off as the lion pounces on her. (The lion is J, if you didn’t figure this out already). She takes him down with the full weight of her muscly lion body and viciously bites him in the face.

Second Round...
Ren brutally finishes off the prone knoll and continues fighting! Her luck runs out however and she gets cleaved in the shoulder. Ildan rushes into the fight and goads Ren into fighting harder (“You call that a hit?!”). Ren can’t live it down and goes right for the pack leader. The gnoll takes a terrible blow, but just like Ren, she is still standing.

Vani takes advantage of the leader’s distracted state and sneaks around to throw a dagger. Unfortunately, this comes at a moment where Ildan is raising his shield and the dagger clangs off of the inside of his shield.

Another gnoll notices Vani and rushes her. Its flail smacks her good.

The leader snarls, angry at the attack Ren made on her before. It runs to grapple with her, the fight leading to her sword piercing Ren’s chest. They both grin at each other, blood on their teeth. Ah female bonding!

Ildan fends off another attack with his shield.

The Bird fires off another two arrows. They sink into the chest of a gnoll, who manages to still stand, though mortally wounded.

Dorian pops out from a bush and fires another shot at the gnoll attacking Vani. It keels over, dead.

Narcel’Uss targets the gnoll with two arrows and carefully charges up just enough energy to knock her unconscious with her burning purple light.
For the next attack, the lion circles, trying to find the weakest spot on her prey, and then “RAWR” she springs into the air and heavily descends upon the leader of the gnolls. Ildan helps protect her by raising up his trusty shield. This doesn’t quite work as planned, as she glances off of Ildan’s shield and overshoots the leader. She doesn’t know her new strength!

Third Wave...
Ren gutterally yells at the gnoll leader and attempts to behead it. She chops at the creature’s neck but somehow it is still standing! Its resolve is astounding! Ildan points and says to Ren “this is your moment”. Ren stays determined! Ildan pointing was just the inspiration she needed. Ren rushes in and chops the head clean off. Ren pants and lays her hand on Ildan (maybe a bit of elbow rubbing, but just the tip!) and says “Thank ye”.

Let’s Loot!
Vani and Ildan start looking over the bodies for goodies. J and Dorian look for anyone still living who needs healing. Ren says some quiet words over the body of the lead gnoll. Bird wants to heal Ren but is having a hard time with the net, and can’t quite approach her. She goes instead to Vani and heals her. Vani continues looking around the bodies and regards the one with two arrows sticking from its chest.

Ildan finds an exquisitely crafted longsword in the middle of the field. It is decorated with roses and ivy (which is also the name of the blade). He switches his out for the fancy one, though it is not quite his style.

J finds a man in his mid-forties who has a mortal wound through the chest, though is still alive. J heals him and he perks up. “You’re not a gnoll, you’re a gnome! Did anyone find a sword? Roses and Ivy? Actually did anyone find a hand??”. His right arm is missing below the elbow. Healing cannot fix that.

Bird finds a pack of supplies with some name tags. She looks more carefully, they seem to all say “J- Pangol”. Bird takes one and dangles it in front of J. She knows what it means immediately. “Hey, are you with Julia Pangol?”
“Yes, we were!” the man replies. “However, the gnolls captured several of our party”. It seems five are missing.
The other name tags say other names like “Janet Pangol”, etc. Julia may have a bunch of aliases that she uses. So, it is just ONE Pangol that is missing and four party members. The man explains that their party was on an expedition, looking for a certain tower. Likely they were looking for the same tower as the TIP.

Narcel’Uss moves forward to wake and question the one remaining gnoll...