We started where we left off; looking at the bodies of a pair of Worgs. Hayley was upset that once again we were killing wildlife, but other than that generally the feeling was of relief that nobody was dead. Whilst Mishkal doled out a little healing and the rest argued over who was the best recipient of the remaining healing potion, Emily wandered up the path to take a look at the house. Hayley came along, eager to see Margaret again. On investigation the witch's house seemed to be abadonded. The once-neat garden was growing over and the ivy covering the house had become wild and unruley. And yet, after some closer inspection, the watching girls noticed a freshly-baked steaming pie on the windowsill. Hearing the party moving through the woods behind them with their very own special version of stealth, Emily decided to look a bit closer.
Leading Hayley by the hand, Emily warily stepped through the gate into the garden. As she did, she looked again at the pie and, in a flashback to being very young, felt an overwheling urge to go and bite into its delicious flakey pastry to discover the wonderful-smelling filling. It was only a little pie, nobody would miss it...
shaking her head, Emily managed to clear her head of pie-related thoughts. Hayley however wasn't so controlled. With a shout of "PIE!" she launched herself at the house, with only the hand held by Emily holding her back. Meanwhile, the rest of the party continued their approach with Ug noticing something moving on the roof of the house. Unfortunately hunters instincts took over, and Ug froze in place watching and waiting to see if it was a danger. Consequently he was the only one NOT surprised when the gargoyle swooped down from above and nearly ripped Emily's head off. Hayley took this moment of shock to rip her hand free of Emily and run at the house shouting "PIE! PIE!" Ug decided this was the moment to strike, and strike he did. Poorly. His massive axe bouncing off the gargoyle's stoney hide.
Seeing a hulking gargoyle in front of her and the small girl she had grown quite attached to running for a witch's house intent on pie-larceny Emily took the only course of action open to her. Wiping blood from her eyes she threw herself into an impressively athletic cartwheel followed by a forward roll and shouting "DON'T EAT THE PIE" dived past the gargoyle then chased down Hayley, tackling her to the ground just as she was about to spoon some of the pie into her mouth. Sword meanwhile moved through the fence to help defeat the monster. Sadly he too noticed the pie and thought better of fighting the stone beast till he'd had a chance to sample the tasty pastry-based item in full view on the windowsill. Emily, wrestling with Hayley, just had time to see Arthur striding past before he bit deeply into the pie and, with a blissful look on his face, went totally rigid.
Back outside the PieZone, Mishkal decided to adopt the Way of the Cat to defeat the creature. Making himself look big was easy, casting Enlarge Person to grow to the size of a giant. Sadly, although he fully intended to smash the gargoyle into a thousand pieces, as he approached a glazed expression came over his face as the Lure of the Pie took him and he started looking in the direction of the house...
Meanwhile, Gregore stroked his mighty beard and involked the wisdom of the ages. "Eek!" he said, "It's going to need something magical to defeat it! Although I appear to have, um, forgotten anything useful." "That would explain things!" responded Ug who had just been twated by the beast and was in the process of retreating using his hands to hold in his guts. Seeing the party being chopped down around her, Emily had to think fast. She had a creature that could only be harmed by magical things. She had an obviously magical pie. Combine the two! Scooping the pie from Arthur's unresisting hand, she took careful aim and hurled it at the stone garoyle. Drenched in pie and howling in pain as the hot filling ran over him, the gargoyle looked on in fear as Mishkal's pie-addled brain suddenly found a new target. He wanted pie. Pie was on the monster. Time to break the monster to get pie!
For a frantic few seconds the party and the gargoyle fought over the pie, taking much abuse as the gargoyle lashed out in all directions whilst Emily tried her best to keep Hayley safe. Beard decided to come back into the action to see if there was anything he could do to help. Quickly he sized up the situation and decided the best thing he could do was eat PIE. At that moment, the gargoyle had wrestled the pie from the now-paralysed Mishkal so Beard launched himself at the creature intent on removing the pie from his possession. Sadly, when a feeble aged man fights a hulking stone gargolye there can only be one result and Beard joined Team Zero Hitpoints and staggered away as the gargoyle brandished the now-reforming pie. Disgusted, Beard limped away shouting "Give me the damn pie!" Suddenly Mishkal lurched back into motion, making a grab for the pie and passing it off to Beard before getting clubbed on the head and disabled.
Seeing this, Emily (who had finally managed to sit on Hayley) shouted to the still-paralysed Arthur "If you kill the gargoyle, you can get some PIE!" Arthur, under the Power of the Pie, finally lurched into action and beat the gargoyle down using his apparently-magical sword. Guessing at the properties of the item, Emily shouts to the party "By the power of The Pie - I RELEASE YOU" and as they come back to their senses she passes Hayley off to Mishkal and heads too the house, followed by Sword. When they head for the front door they discover the vines growing over the house reach for them. Instead, they decide to climb in the window.
Inside, the house is neat if a little dusty. Quickly looking through the place they discover the kitchen and at the back of a cupboard a collection of potions. Finding a couple labelled "CLW", Sword heads back outside to Team Disabled whilst Emily, in a stroke of obscure genius, decides to look for the witch in the oven. She doesn't find the witch, but it is suspiciously clean - as if it handn't been used as one might expect. Whilst Sword took medicine to the injured, Emily spend quite some time with her head in the oven before finally finding a concealed catch which opened the entire wall revealing steps down into the darkness.
The party came in and the casters spent some time discussing the remaining potions, trying to identify them whilst Ug decided to make himself at home and washed and shaved at the kitchen mirror. Bored, Emily and Sword moved down the steps a little way to see if they could head anything. At the bottom they found a sturdy door and, since they clearly weren't as stealthy as they'd hoped, a voice from the other side called out to them asking them to release her. While Emily went to work on the lock with her lockpicks, they chatted to the person on the other side who claimed to be Margaret. Apparently she had been imprisoned in her own secret library by the rogue wizard the party had heard had been arrested recently. She had only survived the last couple of months by eating her project. Since retiring and handing in her spellbook she had taken to crafting replicas of historical sites out of gingerbread. After releasing her and helping her back up to the kitchen, the party settled in for the evening. Beard and Margaret hit it off immediately when he told her he was a librarian. She was less impressed when she realised he was a crap librarian, but eager to prove her wrong he went down to the library and spent several happy hours telling her the various books were filed in the wrong place, which went down about as well as you'd expect.
Over the course of the evening, it was explained quite why the team had come into the woods to seek Margaret. She agreed, although reluctantly, to accompany them to Aldibar to meet with Hadar as long as they didn't mind detouring on the way through an area she wanted to visit. As she described it, Ug recognised some of the landmarks as the area his tribe were forbidden to enter since nobody ever came out. Great. Eventually, after much discussion, it was decided to return to the village on the morrow and decide once they had returned Hayley to her mother.
The next day, the party was up bright and early to receive Pelor's blessed healing and then to kill the vine of doom which was stuck to the outside of the house. After breakfast the fighters trooped outside whilst Emily washed up and Beard drunk tea. The fight went poorly for the three outside as they were grappled and nearly beaten to death by the vine. Finally, Emily and Beard decided they probably should help and wandered outside, Emily grabbing a few pints of lamp oil on the way. Whilst Beard joined the party in the fight, now consisting of them heroically shooting the vine from a distance, Emily chucked the oil over the roots of the plant and lit it. The vine died horribly, the victory of intelligence over brawn only being stalled briefly for Mishkal to put out the fire which was threatening to set catch the roof and burn the cottage down.
And then it was time to leave. The party travelled back through the forest with Ug carrying Margaret's huge bag of essential "lady's things" and books. Stopping only briefly to kill some wildlife of the leopard variety (it was chopped down by the fighters whilst Margaret and Beard told Hayley about it's habits and what a glorious creature it was and Emily stopped her watching the slaughter) they made it back to the town where Hayley was reunited with her mother. Deciding to spend the night in the inn before leaving, the party moved in for the evening whilst Beard wrote a scroll using materials Margaret had given him.
And there we leave it, with the party trying to decide whether to go to the Land of Doom or not.