Party: Exandra, Rufus, Hilniflit, Finial, Callehalahath, Clonk
Day 0: Taxes in town settled up, 510 GP added to the Guild Kitty, running total: 935 GP No additional supplies purchased.
Day 1: The party sets out to figure out what is happening in the forests of Westmarch and only has vague rumors about a wizard in the East corrupting the fey. They make camp outside the forest edge – as has become habit.
Day 2: They return to the grove of bone white trees early in the morning. This is the grove they came across in the first mission months before. They find the ground black and slimy, covered in a festering rot. The bone white trees are still budding mysteriously.
They hear some rustling and Calle sends her tiger, Sasha, ahead to see what it might be. Sasha roars for help and the party finds her being attacked by three small humanoid creatures made of rotting leaves. They seem resistant to stabbing, but can be hurt with magic, fire and blunt force. As the party scraps with the small creatures, they are ambushed by a taller, female humanoid. She is pale-skinned with dead leaves for hair and seems to be able to step into trees and teleport instantly between them.
After the battle, once they have killed the creatures, the green buds that were growing on the bone white trees wither to black and fall. The party searches the creatures and finds 25 GP. While searching, some forest sprites appear. Hil speaks with them in fey and learns the female creature was once a dryad, but had been corrupted by the wizard with the harelip and became undead and evil. She was oppressing the normal forest denizens and they thank the party for saving them from her.
The sprites say the wizard had come from the East and they no longer felt safe in the forest and were going to move on to safer territory. Hil marks a leaf and gives it to the sprites in case they need to reach the party in Westmarch with more news.
The party continues East and comes across an old, red, cloth strip tied to a tree. Another is close by and the trail of red markers lead to an abandoned and messy camp with the remains of a bramble wall crumbling in disrepair. The camp seems to have been abandoned for a while and the party can't seem to determine who may have left it.
Finial searches the fire pit and finds a fishhook and pockets it. The party marks the camp on their map and collects a scrap of cloth so they can ask around about it and then decide to move on.
Further East, the party finds a grove of maple trees and a small cottage with smoke coming from the chimney. Hilniflit sneaks up to the cottage to get a peek through the windows. The cottage seems cozy and lived in with a table set for two people, but she can't see anyone inside. Moving around the building, she finds an open window leading to a messy kitchen with a burning stove. Hil messages back to the group that she's found an open window and is going to climb in. Finial joins her. The rest go through the front door.
The group that goes through the front are suddenly attacked by magical objects, including a book that flies through the air and an enchanted fire poker. After a quick struggle, Exandra destroys the book and Rufus bends the poker, but it refuses to be disenchanted, so they tie it to a cord to restrain it. The poker continues to whip around, trying to attack them as they search the room.
Meanwhile, Hilniflit and Finial open the stove in the kitchen and are attacked by a small fire elemental. Finial summons water in midair over it and douses it immediately. They notice a chair leaning against a door, wedging it closed. Hil removes the chair to find a stairway leading to a basement or cellar. She heads downstairs out of curiosity with Finial close behind.
The rest of the party searches the rest of the cottage and find a hallway leading to a closed door. Sasha, the tiger, sniffs at the door and growls – but the group suddenly hears Hil and Finial cry out from downstairs and they rush to investigate. Calle leaves Sasha guarding the door.
They find Hil and Finial in a sunken pantry tangling with a creature made of molten pastry that spatters them with flaming pizza gobs when they hit it. Nothing seems to stop its rampage until Calle summons a water elemental that finally defeats it. The quickly search the pantry and find nothing important. They decide to go back upstairs and see what's behind the door in the hallway.
When they enter the room, they find a small winged creature tearing up books and a bloodied man tied to the bed. The creature attacks them with its stinging tail. The party kills the creature, Clonk learns it is an imp in the process. (A minor devil that can sometimes be an evil wizard's familiar.)