[Notes for the run of November 18, 1999.]

We sort out the watches given our new compatriots.  First watch has Calais,
Anton, and Hobbes.  During the watch, Hobbes turns visible, poking at Rhori.
Calais and Anton figure this means something's up, so we look around
carefully, but spot nothing.  Rhori wakes up groggily, and Hobbes tells him
he smelled Fell.  Rhori relays this, and we start waking everyone else.

Rhori, Hobbes, and Calais sneak out to have a look.  Hobbes leads Rhori to a
spot from where he sees a couple of shapes go by.  They look vaguely orcish.
He hears a voice a bit further off, speaking Fell.  Calais also hears it;
it's saying, "Boy that was easier than I thought."  They seem to be heading
vaguely north to south.  It looks like they'll bypass the camp.

Rhori pulls back and waves Calais back to camp with him.  He says he doesn't
think they'll hit the camp.  Calais mentions that they seem to be returning
from some mission.  We think about what that might be, and realise they're
coming from the general direction of the Magician's rose garden, and are
perhaps headed toward the start of the churned path.

Rhori does something that helps him see in the dark, and heads back (with
Calais again trailing) to see how many there are.  He checks the tracks and
estimates about a dozen, including one larger one.

He reports back.  The party, all armored up now except for Rhori, head off
in pursuit, leaving our horses hobbled.  After a while, some of us notice a
bat paralleling our course.  Rhori skewers it with an arrow; Anton also
fires off a magic missile (which misses).  The latter is a bright flash of
light, and Hobbes reports that the orcs are on the hill and are looking our
way.

Calais hears a Fell voice ordering someone to "give him the book."  We break
into a ragged charge.  We see a figure at the top of the hill; Rhori can
make out that it looks like a cloaked goblin.  There's also a circle of orcs
around a figure bigger than an Uruk-hai and smaller than a giant: an ogre.

Paris starts to run forward.  Rhori shoots the goblin in the thigh.  Lucas
moves forward, braces, fires his crossbow, and misses.  Anton, who failed to
notice the cloaked figure, looses a Silence spell on the circle of orcs, but
misses, wide to the left.  Mia casts her newly learned ego attack spell at
the cloaked figure; the goblin's face contorts in terror as the spell pulls
up fearsome images from his own mind.  She can tell, however, that it won't
work on him a second time.

The ogre and the orcs head for the goblin, who exhorts them in Fell to move
their lazy orc asses and give him some cover.  The ogre, faster than the
orcs, reaches him and turns to put an enormous shield between him and us.

Rhori shoots again but misses.  The rest of us continue forward.  Alexis
runs almost all the way up, stopping just out of reach of the ogre.  Anton
releases his other racked Silence spell, hitting the ogre and the goblin
behind him.

Some orcs run up to Alexis; Calais comes up and joins her.  Paris runs up to
the ogre, who swings his club but misses.  She whacks him in the stomach.
Rhori shoots it, but the arrow doesn't penetrate.

Rhori moves up and lobs an arrow into the goblin, who's dropped prone to try
to gain some cover.  He hits, dinking the goblin a bit more.

Alexis pulls away from the orcs who had just reached her, and catches up to
the orc who was carrying the book to the goblin.  She engages him to try to
keep him from reaching the goblin.

Since her spell won't work again on the goblin, Mia zaps the ogre with her
ego attack.  It takes some damage, but it too will be able to resist further
attempts.  Anton flashes the mob of orcs, blinding most of them.  They mill
generally forward.

The orc Alexis was harassing turns to fight her, having managed to hand off
the book to the goblin.  Alexis mutters an oath as the goblin starts to bolt
down the other side of the hill.  Rhori sends Hobbes to run down the goblin.

The ogre misses Paris again; she swings and hits it again.  Then it swings
and connects.  She tries to block and fails, but absorbs the blow without
staggering.

Calais, facing two orcs (one blinded), connects solidly with the unblinded
one, knocking it out.  The blind one swings at Calais but misses.  Alexis
stuns her orc, but it's still conscious.  Two orcs swing at Lucas, but miss.
Lucas swings back and kills one with a single blow.

The goblin starts to incant and gesture.  Hobbes, having used his full move
to get to him, cannot attack, nor even roar, but turns visible to try to
startle him into fumbling the spell.  He fails, and the goblin vanishes,
along with the closest orc.  Hobbes confirms with Rhori that he wasn't
supposed to go as well.  (Apparently the teleport can bring others along,
but only if they want to go.)

We continue fighting the remaining orcs and the ogre.  Calais gets hit
twice, and is briefly knocked out, but Mia casts a combat healing spell and
wakes him up.  Rhori rushes up to cover him and sweeps the two orcs.  Calais
rolls out from under and stands up, but is unable to engage either of the
orcs.  One of them hits Rhori solidly, and it dawns on Rhori that he has no
armor on.  Mia quickly heals him, but now Hobbes's dander is up, and he
leaps over and roars at the orcs, startling them and various of the rest of
us as well.  He then bites the head off one of them, and Rhori clobbers the
other.

Eventually Paris knocks out the ogre, and we mop up the rest.  The healers
deal with various minor wounds.  Calais manages to check the ogre's pouch
before anyone else thinks of it, and comes up with a few coins.

We find five cards.  We guess there'd have been more if we'd stopped the
goblin.  Ah well.  We return to camp, clean our armor, and get the rest of a
good night's sleep.

The next day, we continue to the forest Kelli.  An elf pops up and greets
Rhori, recognising him as a guardian of nature.  The elf asks if those
following Rhori are a problem, but Rhori somehow figures out he's referring
to us.  The elves agree to watch our horses for us, and tell us a bit about
how to fight spiders, including giving Rhori some arrows that are better at
penetrating their hard shells.

They make some comment about symmetry with their tree, but I don't know what
the comment was or what it was in reference to.  Anton asks about the dark
of the full moon, and the elves try to explain about the connectedness
between the dark and the fell and nature and light, but we can't understand.

[Sheryl claims there were additional clues being given out over at the
quiet table, but I didn't hear anything.]

Lucas asks the elves if the spiders can "see in the dark" like some monsters
and people have seemed to be able to.  They say something like, "No, but
they could tell if you touched or were stuck in their webs; even if it was
dark."

We get a good night's sleep at the edge of the elf's forest, trusting them
to keep guard for us.

We get an early start, entering the dark and dreary forest, working our way
up the stream, which is almost like a tunnel.  We start to feel the
oppressiveness, and eventually Mia casts a spell that provides light as well
as defense against the Presence drain.