Everyone apart from Gregore and Uug, who decided to stay behind and keep the portal open, stepped through into the sunny glade. As they arrived Micheal looked around at the trees and realised that after waiting for thousands of years someone had finally rescued him. “I’m outside” he muttered in amazement before fading slowly out of existence. The rest, accepting this as probably being typical ghost behaviour, started looking around for signs of druids. Emily found a shade free spot at the centre of the glade where she felt better, Margaret found some interesting plants, Arthur looked at the ring of very large trees surrounding the clearing and Mishkal noticed a ring of grass in the centre that looked as though it had been flattened. After a while Mishkal got a little bored of looking at grass and gave a yell of “DRUIDS, HELLO, WE’VE COME TO FIND YOU.” He got no answer from any druids, although he did startle the local wildlife, so he moved off into the forest still shouting for the druids. The rest of the group in the clearing listened to his cries getting fainter and then suddenly stopping with an exclamation of “Hey I found an axe.”
Arthur headed off to take a look and found Mishkal struggling to remove a nasty looking axe from a tree. He lent a hand, the axe came free and they were heading back to show the others when the undergrowth around them suddenly seemed to come alive, shoots and branches growing out to hold them in place.
Meanwhile, in a distant lab, a former librarian was instructing a somewhat confused barbarian in the finer points of grammatical correctness. Just as Uug seemed to be getting to grips with the whole alphabet concept, Margaret’s head appeared through the portal and suggested there was something they might like to take a look at. Gregore was not convinced “How do we even know that’s our world out there?” But Margaret assured him she had identified several species of plant native to their country and he grudgingly stepped through followed by Uug.
At this point Miskal decided to inform everyone else that "There's a face in the tree." As he had just caught sight of a little female face forming from the bark. Gregore, a little too excited for a man of his age, ran forwards to have a look at the face, but the 'entangling' plants reached upwards and grabbed his legs. Uug meanwhile stayed back where the plants couldn't grab him, that was until those beneath his feet became equally unpleasant and began to wrap themselves around him. The whisper of "Tree Killer" wandered through the air.
Meanwhile the face in the tree was followed by the body of a dryad, who was joined by her kin from the other trees in the grove. "They're nice" Gregore said, "Well usually." Everyone stopped struggling and put their weapons down and the plants settled back releasing everyone except Uug. "He is a tree killer" declared the dryads. At which point Uug and Miskal attempted to explain that had they realised the trees minded, the barbarians might not have been such avid lumberjacks. The dryads did not seem convinced by this and the reason became apparent when they informed the party that the tree used to create Uug's bow had in fact been capable of objecting. The bow had been made from one of their "sisters" and as a result Uug would have to face punishment for the crime of murdering a dryad.
This turned into a long moralisic discussion upon the right and wrong of holding someone accountable for the crimes of their race and forebarers, including reference to many similar legal points of major significance to the continued justice systems of all people. And ended with the party being sent to kill a group of troublesome Orcs to prove their innocence, in that way that happens so often to parties of adventurers. The dryads also agreed that they would do what they could for Emily, suggesting that they had something which "should help". Their confidence was overwhelming.
So the deal was struck, the party would spend the night on the edge of the grove and head out the next day orc hunting. As they took turns to keep watch during the night, Arthur and Mishkal witnessed the dryads dancing to the moon. Uug, although he watched hopefully, didn't. The party was awoken at first light by a dryad offering to show them the location of the orcs who would still be asleep. Miskal and Gregore decided to stay behind to pray and read while Arthur and Uug were led away by the dryad. She spent most of the journey carefully stepping around every pansy and spent a good half hour explaining to them the importance of a twig arthur nearly stepped upon, before finally comming to a stop behind a tree in the thick of the jungle.
"The orcs are just over there." she said, then prompty wondered off. Deciding they needed to take a closer look, that is perhaps actually see the orcs, Arthur and Uug decided to sneek up on the orc camp for a peek. However between them they showed about as much stealth as a clumsy elephant in full-plate. They realised their error when the two orcs on watch, convinced from the noise that an entire army was descending on them, raised the alarm and rushed into the forest towards them. Arthur dodged the javlin that came flying at him as Uug felt something embed itself deep in his leg. Hereditary orc killing instincts overpowering all thoughts of being civilised, Uug charged after the orc that had wounded him. Arthur waited patiently until the other orc came running towards him before bringing his blade up to slice it cleanly in half. Looking up from the bloody remains of his orc Uug noticed the rest of the large group of orcs, including a very nasty looking leader, pulling on armour, grabbing weapons and heading in his direction. As Uug and the orcs collided Arthur tried to hide and sneak up on them, unfortunatly being 6ft and clad in shiny armour made this difficult and though they fought bravely, i.e. hit everything with steel, sadly Uug and Arthur were brought down by the Orcs.
Hearing the loud echos of orc horns in the distance, Gregore and Miskal concluded something was probably up, so headed out to find their comrades. When they did catch up both fighters were bound and under watch, so this time it was their turn to try and sneek up on the orcs. Meanwhile the rogue was, somewhere doing something else, damn. Mishkal told Gregore not to worry as Palor would protect them. Gregore looked at Mishkals breast-plate and suggested they split up to approach the orcs. Mishkal's attempt at sneaking was not completely successful and he quickly gave up, started waving his arms and shouted "HERE I AM COME AND GET ME" this proved quite a useful distraction for Gregore. While Miskal drew his mace and began clubbing orcs Gregore sneaked around to the side and with a flash of bright light dazed one of the orc guards. Everyone was amazed, Gregore had done something vaguely useful with a spell.
Leaping on the opportunity Uug shoulder barged one of the orcs 10 feet back while Arthur threw himself upon their weapons and cut his bonds with his sword, which he prompty used to bash down orcs. Uug likewise grabbed his axe and all of a sudden the party was up and operating again, and it lasted for almost 18 seconds. The orcs continued thier uncanny ability to hit Arthur right were it hurts and before long both he and Uug were back on the ground. Miskal meanwhile was getting in over his head trying to fend of half a dozen orcs, including their monster of a leader, by himself.
Gregore considered his options, he could run and hope to get some help from either the dryads who had done nothing about the orcs before or perhaps Emily who with luck still had a head. Or he could attempt to shrink the orc leader to half it's size. In the end the latter won out, it seems Confuscious's insistance that Gregore was a great mage had gone to his head. So he ran in and tapped the orc leader on the shoulder, the leader not only failed to shink but didn't even seem to notice as it continued bringing it's axe down to knock Miskal unconsious. Looking around Gregore realised he was all alone and surrounded by orcs. He managed to block the first blow with his quaterstaff before being stabbed through the heart from behind.
All in all it was a bad day.