Moving further West, we came upon a river. The waters were deep and the current was strong. Though the weather was warm, we weren't too keen on trying to wade through it.
"If the gnolls move through here, there has to be a way across," Jaheira noted as we examined the river, considering how difficult it would be to wade through.
I nodded in agreement. "And a good place for bandits to collect toll if there are."
We walked south along the river, spotting a bridge from afar. As we approached, we caught sight of a man, another traveling merchant from the looks of it, running down the bridge towards our side of the river bank. He nearly passed us by in His rush before noticing us. "Thank goodness! There's a bear! It's coming this way!"
"Another bear?" Neera pouted. "What's with this trip and bears?"
We signaled for the merchant to stay behind us and waited. Still no bear. We looked at the merchant.
"I swear there's a bear on the other side of the bridge! Maybe it's still waiting there," he insisted.
"Maybe we could pay the bear honey as toll," Imoen joked.
But instead of brown-furred behemoth that we expected, we were greeted with the sight of an even bigger white-furred behemoth.
What is a freaking polar bear doing all the way here?!?
"Anyone got a penguin?" Neera squeaked.
We started firing away as it charged, but Jaheira shouted, "Hold your fire, let me try and charm it!"
"Khalid, try to hold it off without fighting back!" I shouted encouragement. Emphasis on tried.
"How-how-how… How?!?" Khalid whimpered as the polar bear reared up to its full height in front of him at 10 feet tall.
Jaheira's spell completed, and… the polar bear sat got down onto all fours.
"Spell only lasts one minute. What now?" Jaheira said.
Crap-crap-crap! "Forward! Spread out, find trouble, lead it back to us!" I shouted orders.
Jaheira and bear went one way, each of us another way.
Thankfully, it didn't take long to find trouble. Neera came running back our way, screaming and running right past us.
Not so thankfully, trouble came in the form of TWO large ogres bearing greatswords! As if regular ogres were not challenging enough!
"Good luck fuzzy! Keep 'em busy!" I shouted encouragement. No, I wasn't sure why I did that. "Everyone, give fuzzy covering fire!"
Under Jaheira's orders, the polar bear charged the ogres. Roaring, screaming, slashing, tearing, shooting, twirling, and two ogres stood over a chopped up polar bear. One was badly slashed by claws, pierced by arrows and bullets.
We focused down the wounded ogre with volley fire before it reached us, but soon there was a fresh one just upon us. As Khalid moved up to face the last very angry ogre, Branwen's Command spell put it to sleep. What followed was the most hurried 6 seconds of our lives as the whole party beat down on the ogre before it could get up again.
"Like I said, what's with this trip with big angry things? That's three bears and three ogres so far. We haven't seen a single gnoll yet!" Neera complained.
"How did you know we'd find something to throw the polar bear at," Imoen asked me.
"I didn't," I responded, "If we didn't find anything soon, I'd have used the last 20 seconds or so to send it far away."
Jared, the travelling merchant from earlier, gave us a pair of white boots in thanks and left.
The party eyed the boots suspiciously.
"You'd think he'd tell us what they were before gifting it to us?" Neera grumbled. The boots were not identified. "Aren't magical boots too nice a gift in this situation?"
Imoen had regaled the group in length about the hilarity that Montaron went through with the Belt of Femininity and Masculinity. Everyone in this group was quite comfortable in their current gender.
"Takes a real arse-hole to give out cursed boots to adventurers who just helped him out," I said. "Maybe we're being too paranoid."
But no one put the boots on.
Neera had actually caught sight of another bridge up north near where the ogres were.
"Figure there's more of them back there?" she asked.
We checked it out, and found another ogre at the foot of the bridge. We stuck to the same strategy, weakening it with volley fire until it was almost upon us, then hitting it with the Command spell for a guaranteed turn of butt-kicking. The blasted thing actually got up after all of us hit it, but Neera quickly used a scroll of Magic Missiles to finish it off.
Damn, it was nice having a cleric on the team!
Further down the bridge we found more hobgoblins. Three this time. We didn't think too much of them until their arrow connected with Jaheira's arm in spite of her plate mail.
"My arm, it burns like fire!" she cried. "'Tis poisoned!"
Khalid tossed her an antidote which she drank even as they both charged forward. As they engaged the hobgoblins in melee across the narrow bridge, they had bad news to share.
"O-o-ogre! In the back," Khalid cried, "It's coming!"
Definitely time to break out some magic. Neera cast Sleep and the spell connected with 2 hobgoblins and the 1 ogre. The last hobgoblin went down to ranged fire.
"Five, five ogres now!" Neera groaned once the battle was done.
I didn't blame her. A single swipe from those colossal things, just one, and Neera would be a pink pancake. I don't think Khalid fancied challenging one in fair combat just yet either.
Yeah, I wish Kivan was on the team. He was a ranger who specialized in taking out ogres (+4 to hit and damage). He hung about High Hedge, but I had skipped him in favour of Imoen.
Meanwhile Khalid was helping Jaheira dress her wound as she sat in the grass on the opposite bank from which we came from.
"How's it look?" I asked, leaning over to check myself.
"Smarts like crazy. But nothing to make a big fuss about," Jaheira said. "Antidote did the trick with the poison."
I nodded and I was just getting up when I heard someone say, "Hey, you jerk!"
I turned around. Neera was staring straight at me with her hands on her hips. "You've got literal healing hands now! At least offer to use it. Just because a lady says she's fine, doesn't mean you should actually let her suffer in pain!"
I was so taken aback by what she was telling me that I couldn't speak a moment. Jaheira and Khalid looked up at her, uncertain what to say as well.
Close by, Branwen scoffed. "Sounding like the folks back at Norhiem there. They have their own ideas about how a woman should behave there."
Neera rolled her eyes. "This isn't about controlling women. It's about not knowing how to communicate with women."
"If I need healing, I'll say so, believe me," Jaheira finally spoke up. "These stupid games of not saying what you mean have no place on the field of battle. That kind of nonsense gets one killed."
Neera was taken aback by being told off by Jaheira, considering she was trying to help Jaheira in the first place. "But, but I…"
I put up my hands. "Okay, everyone, let's not make a big fuss. I think I get what brought this on."
I bade everyone to have a seat, and passed out the water. Once each of them had a drink, I said to Neera gently. "We haven't really had many injuries so far, have we? So it's understandable if you didn't realize this from our experience up until now, but scraps like this is normal in adventuring work. Jaheira and Khalid are proper warriors so they are fully aware of the risks. Branwen, being trained as a war priest, knows how to ration out healing spells as well."
Neera scratched the back of her head. "Yeah, this is the first adventuring party I've been with. Been getting by alone, all this time."
"I think I took too much for granted here," I said to everyone. "I should have spent more time on getting the group to know more about each other. We're on a quest now, but the next rest we can exchange tales. See if we can understand each other a bit better and anticipate needs. How's that sound?"
Agreement all around, and lots of smiles too. Neera, Branwen and Jaheira started chatting away. I figured I should let everyone have a break before we moved on.
In retrospect, maybe I should have assigned a watch, even for a short break. I noticed too late that an unknown group was approaching our position. Hiding behind a tree here, a bush there.
"Everyone, get ready but don't be too obvious," I said in a hushed voice.
Everyone gently picked up their weapons and tried not to turn their heads to look. They adjusted their sitting positions, ready to jump and dodge at a moment's notice.
A man in chain mail emerged from the treeline. "Ah, weary travelers, well met! Neville, the fairest of all fair bandits, at your service. What may I do for you this hour?"
I clicked my tongue. "Well, for starters, you could tell your men in the bushes to drop their bows and step out into the open."
It was Neville's turn to click his tongue. "Did you find all five of them, then? Pity, I shall have to train them better."
Crap, I only counted three! My eyes, darting to and for, were probably betraying my surprise, but that mattered little at this point. Where are the other two?
Neville smirked, knowing he had the upper hand. "Anyhow, I'm afraid that I can't abide by your wishes. Truly, I see no other choice than to order them to fire at will and rob your sad corpses of any iron they may carry."
Neville brought his sword up. Before it could come down and point at us, Khalid and Jaheira had already leapt into action, large shields towards the bushes and standing in front of the rest. Branwen was a moment slower to take a defending position for me, Imoen and Neera.
Arrows started pelting us, and our tanks stood firm, then charged the archers between shots.
"Neera!" I shouted. "Sleep 'em!"
Neera incanted quickly and three hobgoblins fell over from the bushes onto the ground. These could be dealt with later. Imoen, and I let loose counterfire, and one more hobgoblin fell over with a sling bullet embedded in its head.
It was now 6 of us vs Neville and one last hobgoblin. They did not prove to be up to the challenge.
This time, an arrow was sticking out of Jaheira's shoulder, between the armour. Khalid took some time to remove the arrowhead and clean the wound. Imoen was on watch.
"Between the earlier graze with poison and the shoulder wound, you've lost use of your shield arm," I said based on my assessment. Khalid nodded in agreement.
Jaheira winced. "Let's see if your healing touch works then."
I asked Branwen to come and observe my use of healing magic as well. I held the magic on my fingertips, and focused it onto the wounded areas. Before our eyes, the wounds closed and skin turned a healthy color.
"So quick, no incantation!" Branwen remarked in surprise, then considered. "Better save it for use in-combat then. We can rely on our divine spells otherwise."
Jaheira gave a shoulder a cursory shrug, then rotation. She nodded in satisfaction. "I'd say the spell is working as expected, if it could be called a spell."
Neera breathed a sigh of relief. "For someone in plate mail and using a large shield, you're getting arrow-ed quite a bit," Neera said to Jaheira. "For our sake, I know. Thanks for protecting us out there."
Neera was wearing the Girdle of Piercing right now, but I didn't want to move it to Jaheira since Neera really didn't want to get hit by a stray arrow at all.
Meanwhile, Jaheira's AC wasn't as good as Khalid's due to her Dexterity. At 14 Dexterity, Jaheira wasn't exactly a klutz but in ADnD you really needed pretty exceptional Dexterity scores to have any bonuses to AC at all.
Moving westward, we were surprised to find an ogre who wasn't immediately hostile. It just sat at a campfire, eating some mystery meat while we approached from a distance.
"Do friendly ogres exist?" Neera asked. "I thought they eat people."
"They do," I said pointing. "That big drumstick thing it's munching on? It's a human leg."
Neera winced. "Ugh."
The ogre, on its part, waved us away. "You no bother me now, me eat. We fight after me fat happy."
I looked to the rest of the group. They all looked at me back. As one, we nodded at each other.
We moved back as far as we could within effective firing range, then pelted the ogre as much as we could. Once it reached us, we fell back to the old faithful, Command. No more ogre.
We were about ready to continue on to the gnoll fort, which was visible in the distance. Still, we were running low on spells so we decided to rest before moving on.