As we left it, the party were running away from the burning orc village with the evening's darkness coming in and Emily looking like she was succumbing to the disease that had held her so long. The orc horns had just started blaring, calling enemies from far and wide to help save the village and kill the intruders.
Hearing the horns (and seeing Emily's condition) the party decided to steal some horses for the return trip. It was easy to locate a couple of scrawny, terrified animals - the orcs kept plenty around to feed their populace. Calming them down was more difficult. Arthur's tactic of shouting loudly at the creatures failed miserably and in the end Ug needed to do it, although he found that after speaking kindly to one of them the other responded just as well by waving an axe in its face. The party mounted up and headed south, back to the dryad grove. Arthur scooped up Emily who seemed to have grown fangs and have tenticles sprouting on her chin and forehead. With her slipping in and out of coherence behind him, he drove his horse to the greatest speed possible with Ug and Mishkal following behind on the other one.
Orc horns were blaring ahead, so the party cut off the path and threw the wood in a more direct route. Or rather, Arthur and Emily (now with green glowing eyes) did. Ug's horse refused flatly to change direction, running in a straight line for all it was worth. In the end, Mishkal and Ug were forced to abandon horse and head a different way on foot.
After some time riding through the wilds, Arthur and Emily ended up back in the camp. Emily, whose very grip on sanity was breaking, was dragged down the hole by Arthur and left in direct sight of the sun globe with Margaret looking her over, trying to help. On hearing the damage done to the orc settlement, and seeing the condition of Emily, the dryads finally agreed to allow Margaret harvest the ingredients she needed to make the evil laxative.
Margaret took to harvesting the ingredients. Mostly this was easy, despite the distraction of Emily running round shrieking, and looking confused that she couldn't fly using her giant ears. Arthur was sent to get a leaf from a giant flytrap, which defended itself with great gusto. Eventually, deciding it looked like fun, Emily joined in and managed to leap through the foliage, gliding on her ears, before sinking her fangs into the stem and tearing off a leaf. Arthur even managed to get the leaf off her withouth getting stabbed. Whilst Margaret proved her worth by creating the perfect potion, he went aboveground. Much to her own surprise, Margaret's first attempt at the potion succeeded and Emily, having been encouraged to drink, was sent to sleep for several hours whilst it worked its magic.
Back above, Arthur found the dryads performing some kind of ceremony of farewell for Beard and their departed sister in the form of Ug's bow. They danced round the pile chanting about the old rules being kept and, as it should be, one life had been given in retribution for another. As they danced, the bow suddenly glowed with a very bright green light and before anyone knew it Beard was stirring and starting to wake up.
It was about this time that Ug and Mishkal finally managed to stagger into the camp. The dryads brought them in and made them comfortable. Ug was given a great apology. Apparently, the only way the bow could have raised Beard as it did was if the wood still contained the spirit of the dryad and hence it had been freely given. Much relieved, Ug got his bow back and everyone greeted Beard back in the land of the living. Beard found an unusual spell in his memory, a gift from the dryad, and spent some time talking to Confucious. The party settled down to get some sleep.
Bright and early the next morning, the party awoke and said goodbye and thank you to the dryads. Emily had recovered her wits, the green glow had gone from her eyes and her ears and teeth had returned to normal. She was, however, still totally bald. Resolving to find first a hat, then a hair-grow tonic, the party headed south looking for civilisation. Beard decided to write his new spell into his book and Margaret managed to find a recipee for appropriate ink in her book of fun. Hence travel was slowed significantly as the entire party swept the wood searching for magic berries of some description. Eventually Ug found some, and with a better frame of reference than a dodgy drawing, Emily managed to find a bush covered in the things. The party decided to stop the night to give Beard a chance to write this up.
Beard decided to make the ink himself, obviously trying to demonstrate that being dead had dulled none of his skills. Sadly he forgot his total lack of skill to begin with and so began a tedious evening of watching Beard throwing horrible black berry-paste out at roughly hourly intervals. Finally, after nearly exhausting an entire grove's supply of berries, he managed to get a tiny amount of ink out and set about the task of writing his book. Fortunately he didn't require any skill to achieve that. The rest of the party settled in for a good night's sleep.
No good night's sleep can be complete without a random orc raid - and this night was no exception. Clearly drawn by the hideous smell of Beard's failed ink, four of the idiots decided to attack in a staggered formation. Predictably they were cut to ribbons by Arthur and The Axinator. Emily descovered that even orcs aren't retarded enough to be confused when their target ran round a tree but that glimer of intelligence didn't save him when a huge axe fell onto his head. After the battle, during which Beard continued writing oblivious and Mishkal slept on confident that Pelor would protect his dreams, the party went back to sleep.
The next day, after several hours travel, the party emerged from the woods and came back to the river dividing the civilised lands from barbarian territory. There they managed to sneak up on a watch tower using the ancient ninja technique of walking to the bank opposite it and shouting. Finally the guards woke up and, after deciding that a priest, a veteran of the war in the south, an old man with a mystic beard, an old woman with a mad look in her eyes, a barbarian with no beard, and a bald girl comprised neither a barbarian raiding party nor an orc horde they decided to let the party over the river on their little boat thing. On learning the group were emissaries of Pelor (ahem) they even shared some breakfast and provided directions to the tower where the party had left the cart.
Several hours trek later, the party found the cart and to their delight discovered it hadn't been either stolen or sold and the people looking after it had only taken a cursory look through it before actually guarding it like they were paid to do. Shocked at this turn of honesty from their fellow men, the party took the cart and headed for Aldibar, telling stories and performing magic tricks in inns to earn beds along the way.
Finally, only a week later than intended, the party rolled into Aldibar to be told that they were expected and were given directions to an inn.
At the end of all this, Confucious gained a level in Bard. Some things just aren't worth getting up for.