Sylvester led the group into the final apartment. It was narrow, though it did extend decently far back. The back wall had an open door to a bedroom while this larger room was set up as a sitting room. It was surprisingly tidy, though certainly not very clean.

On the floor of the room, staring up at Sylvester and the rest, were two women bound and gagged. One was an attractive blond while the other was a more average looking brunette.

“Kurt, see what you can do for Molli and Jennan here. Neil and I are going to try and find the gang’s lockbox.” Sylvester ordered.

Kurt nodded and set to work freeing the two women.

“Do you know where the lockbox is?” Neil asked, cautiously looking around the room.

“It is supposed to be somewhere in the bedroom, but we should find it as quickly as possible.”

“Let’s get searching then.”

It didn’t take long for them to find it. While Sylvester had checked under the bed, Neil found it in the nightstand next to it. They quickly popped it open to see a large number of coins and a druunic bracer, which was exactly what Sylvester had expected to find. He quickly shut the lockbox and led Neil back into the main room where they found Karrank had arrived.

Kurt had finished getting the ropes off Molli and Jennan and the two were carefully asking about what was going on.

“It would probably be better to ask Sylvester here.” Kurt deflected their questions. They both turned to look at Sylvester.

“I think we can skip introductions, but the short of it is that we are rescuing you. The watch is likely coming up the stairs to question us right now, so we should probably go meet them.” He explained while heading for the door.

“Wait! Why are you doing this? You aren’t exactly one of our clients.” Molli, the blonde, suddenly asked.

“I will be honest, rescuing you two was just a bonus. Same for the stuff we just looted from them. The primary goal here was to prevent the Hounds from becoming a problem.” Sylvester explained. This didn’t seem to satisfy Molli, but she didn’t get a chance to ask more questions before he made it out the door.

Like Sylvester had predicted, the watch had arrived to see what was going on. When it was revealed who was involved, Sister Brimbal was also called to question them. Sylvester was honest about everything that the group had found and peacefully handed it over. For his generosity, and help taking care of the hounds, his team got awarded with half of the appraised value of what they had recovered. That came to a surprisingly even 1,900 silver pieces as a reward. Obviously, it mostly came in the form of silver slates, but it was still a sizeable amount of money.

Molli and Jennan both thanked the party again before heading back to wherever they were staying at the moment. Everyone was excited to get paid for their fight because everyone was in rough shape. Kurt was in the worst shape, so that is who Sylvester prioritized healing first. It took three casts of Cure Light Wounds to get him back to perfect condition. Karrank took another two, and then Neil needed an entire four castings to get back to full. All told, it left Sylvester completely drained of internal energy and without anything to heal himself with. He could use one of the group’s healing potions, but that would be a waste.

Instead, he just waved off everyone’s concerns and took them shopping to celebrate. Karrank ended up throwing a party in the Gray Mule, along with most of the residents of Whiteoak Square. Kurt and Neil both spent a good amount of time on Cobbler’s Row, looking into getting boots for the swamp.

Sylvester made his way down to the docks and purchased a rowboat, and then threw some extra silver into getting the dockhand selling it to clean it and decorate it some. He ended up 115 silver lighter, but it would be worth it to avoid a fight.

When everyone reconvened at Shoehaven Manor, they were surprised to see Red Kirsten, Molli, and Jennan all there chatting with Val.

“Oh, you all are finally here! I was wondering how long you had planned to be out.” Val warmly welcomed them in.

“Don’t trust a word she says.” Karrank warned the girls before moving past them and out of the room with Kurt and Neil.

“Well, we are here for the rest of the day. Relaxing before we set off tomorrow morning.” Sylvester said while taking a seat and stretching.

“Oh, are you all leaving?” Kirsten asked.

“Not the city, but we are heading out to the swamp. If nothing goes wrong, we should be back in six days.” Sylvester clarified.

“What are you doing out in the swamp? It is pretty dangerous.” Jennan asked, staring him down.

“We were contacted by the Oracle to do something for her. The first thing we need to do is claim a giant wicker basket from the Nixies in the middle of the swamp.” Sylvester openly replied.

“Is that what the boat is for?” Val asked, putting the pieces together in her head.

“Got it in one. If we provide something more appropriate for entertaining guests than the basket, they should be willing to let it go without issue.” Sylvester nodded.

“The swamp can be very dangerous. Do be careful.” Kirsten warned him.

“We can handle it. It is just going to be us following the river to their pool. We are only going to be in the swamp proper for about two days.” Sylvester reassured her in return.

“Maybe I should pick up some boots before we go, that muck is not going to be pleasant.” Val complained, drawing looks of horror from the other girls.

“You are going out there with them?!”

“Why would you do that?!

“Do you want to die?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Val waved away their complaints. “I always try to see what secrets they uncover, and I haven’t been in danger once.”

“I mean, there were several times where you would have been if we had died.” Sylvester countered.

“And I would have been able to handle myself. That is one of the reasons you haven’t gotten rid of me, isn’t it?”

“Can’t argue with that,” Sylvester admitted before turning to the other girls. “Don’t worry about her. She doesn’t get involved in any of the fighting and just hangs back.”

“It still seems reckless, putting yourself in danger like that.” Kirsten warned.

“Actually, what was the gnoll talking about when he said not to trust anything she says?” Molli suddenly changed the topic.

“Val here has a large talent for deception and putting people into awkward situations.” Sylvester stated, grimacing as he remembered some of the things she had done to him.

“Oh, come on, I only forced you to preach the one time.”

“Really? Because no one would have expected me to even have anything to preach if not for that other time too.”

“Two times, fine. Still nothing to get worked up about.”

“And the other thing, when we ‘rescued’ you from the fungus goblins?”

“Well, if you bring that up of course I look completely untrustworthy.”

“Sorry, what are you two going on about?” Kirsten cut into their argument.

“Just getting Val to admit she isn’t a trustworthy person.” Sylvester smirked.

“Yet you still keep me around.” She smirked even more in response.

“So, when you aren’t following them on their adventures, what do you usually do Val?”

“Oh, this and that. Nothing worth really talking about.” Val chuckled and avoided the question.

“She follows me around and pesters me, is what she does.” Sylvester griped. “Well, I think I am going to head to bed. I need to recover some after that fight with the hounds, still.”

The girls all wished him good health as he made his way back out of the room. He slept well that night, tired from the day’s adventure, and woke up feeling well rested. With his freshly replenished energy, he healed himself some more before deciding he was healthy enough.

The group quickly packed eight days’ worth of food, just in case something went wrong, and went down to the docks. There, they found their new rowboat. It was large enough that it could fit all of them or one person along with Bask. It had been professionally cleaned and some extra embellishments had been added to the boat.

They ended up attaching it to a rope that they tied to Bask who was able to easily pull the small boat along. They quickly began making their way south along the river. It wasn’t a hard trek and they made good time. Not too long after they had lunch, they came across a group of crocodiles basking in the sun on the rivers shore. They snapped at the group, who quickly backtracked to give the angry lizards some space.

Instead of fighting them, however, they simply rowed themselves to the opposite shore of the river. Sylvester had to make a second trip to ferry Bask across, but they made it without issue.

Eventually they had to set up a camp for the night, but it passed by uneventfully. The next morning, Sylvester used some more internal energy to finish healing all his bruises from the fight with the hounds.

The weather was surprisingly pleasant, and the group decided to settle down for a small picnic around lunch time. They were interrupted, however, by the approach of a treeant; it was some swamp tree, gnarled and angry looking. Once again, the group decided to avoid a fight and the treeant didn’t follow them as they left. This, however, forced the group to take a slightly longer route.

They were heading south along the river, until they hit a fork when they would start heading northwest. The plan had been to pull the rowboat out of the water and carry it as they cut across land to reach the northeast stream more quickly, but that would not involve going past an angry treeant while trying to carry a rowboat.

Instead, they went all the way down to the fork before starting to make their way up the stream. By the end of the day, they were finally reaching the edges of the actual swamp.

Unlike most, this swamp was formed by an ancient group of magic users opening a portal do a watery dimension. The water seeped out and turned the entire area into a marshy swamp, but also led to the swamp having a border that was visually easy to distinguish.

That night while Karrank was on watch, he heard something approaching the camp. He grabbed his crossbow while carefully scanning the darkness and trying to see if he needed to wake everyone else up. Emerging from the shadows, came a group of seven lizardmen. Karrank hadn’t seen them before, but he had gotten their description from Sylvester. They were humanoid, with thick muscles and a slightly hunched posture that was accentuated by their heads which didn’t rise much above their shoulders. In all honestly, they looked like gnolls that had scales, frills, and a lizard’s head.

“Who’s there?” Karrank called out to them, pretending like he was having trouble seeing them.

“This one is Shatha.” One of the lizardmen stepped forward more, revealing his scarred skin with many missing scales upon it. “Leader of this hunting party.”

“I am Karrank. What do you want?” Karrank stayed ready but avoided pointing his crossbow directly at Shatha.

“We hunt in this area. We saw the light of your fire and came to investigate.” Shatha explained.

“I see.” Karrank stated, waiting to see where this went.

“We see that you camp here. The swamp is dangerous, you should turn back.” Shatha warned Karrank before heading back out of the camp with the rest of his hunting party.

Karrank briefed the rest of the group on what had happened the next morning.

“Should we be worried? That sounded like a threat.” Kurt asked. Karrank nodded in agreement.

“I wouldn’t be too hasty. Lizardmen are known to… less than tactful.” Neil cautioned. “If you take what they said at face value, they were just trying to warn us from going any further.”

“It isn’t like there is much else to do. We just need to be careful while we proceed further on. Luckily, we should end our journey today at the Nixie Pool.” Sylvester announced.

The party set off, keeping their guard up, heading deeper into the swamp. Like they had been warned, it was significantly more dangerous. The mud was annoying to walk through, but the creatures were also unpleasant.

First, they came across a party of troglodytes. Sylvester managed to convince them that they were on a mission for the Frog god, and the group was allowed to pass. Then, they found a large group of crocodiles munching on something bloody. They gave them a wide berth but pressed on. Finally, they came across a pack of six draco lizards, itching for a fight.