With the approach of summer, scheduling has gotten harder and we were only able to manage a single session in May. It did not go quite as expected.
The plan was to have the cockatrice fight and then arrive in Red Larch. However, the first half of the session wound up being improvised. I rolled for the day's encounters, where 17 or higher meant an encounter. The first roll was a 2, so I figured something other than an encounter should go wrong. The land shark had pounced on a wagon in its initial attack, so I decided that an axle had been damaged. Su'uvarax decided to take advantage of the delay to explore the Sumber Hills a little -- his patron had asked him to investigate -- and he talked Freyja into a little excursion.
This seemed like an excellent time for them to run into the local Uthgardt tribe, the Elks. I had the source book open to the page with the tribe info, and mangled some adjacent NPC names for the two who made conversation. While reading up on Red Larch, I saw that a character had noticed strange things like lightning going up into the sky and patches of fog in broad daylight, so I gave that clue to the barbarians. They were able to show a fog patch to Su'uvarax, who poked around at it without learning anything. Freyja told them about the land shark, which they had never seen.
When they got back to the caravan, Su'uvarax talked to some of the other magic types about what he had learned and got permission from Marco the caravan master to go investigate. Marco decided he'd rather wait for the results while sitting out on the plains, where he could see trouble coming. Su'uvarax managed to find the fog patch again, and Silaqui, Truth and Zook did some arcane investigations. Silaqui noticed that there was a general but unorganized magic about the fog. Zook recognized that the magic was similar to his own wild magic, but not as friendly-feeling as what he experienced.
While the magic types pondered their clues, the outdoorsy types went hunting and acquired some wild pigs for lunch, so the caravan wasn't too anxious about the wait in the end.
The rest of the day was uneventful, and it wasn't until the afternoon of the next day that they overtook a pair of shepherds with their flock. The sheep shifted off the road to let the wagons pass, drifted over a ridge and then came running back with cockatrices in pursuit. Su'uvarax had a good roll and identified them.
Sadly, the scouts were still staying a quarter-mile ahead, so once again they are spending the fight running back to the caravan. (They think getting horses will solve the problem, but my solution is for the party to ditch the caravan and stay in Red Larch.) Even sadly-er, it turns out that a caravan of eight wagons, plus a flock of sheep, plus a dozen cockatrices are all a lot to manage during a combat. We managed three rounds of combat without finishing the fight. Liliandra was able to use Sleep to good effect, but cockatrices are hardy and the magic-users are running out of slots. Freyja narrowly avoided getting turned to stone. It remains to be seen if Thoril and Maendir will be able to get in on the action. If not, I will have Marco send them over the ridge to make sure there are no more cockatrices lurking in the vicinity of the road.
Next up: exploring Red Larch, dealing with the Tomb of the Moving Stones, picking up clues for Feathergale Spire.
