Wagon Ambush
The party heads off to Undead Central, where we believe barely-alive bodies are being taken to have nefarious deeds performed upon their souls. We get to a waypoint and while we are deciding what to do next we notice a wagon heading our way. This wagon is in the middle of nowhere and looks just like the ones we have seen that are involved in this human trafficking, so we decide to ambush it. The first part went well: when the wagon stopped at the edge of a swamp I leapt down from a tree and subdued the driver without injury, asking questions first before killing anyone. That made a pleasant change. The next bit looked like it would be just as smooth. From what we were told by a frightened driver, there was only one foe in the back, with the load of paralysed bodies. Easy! Open the door, deal with chummy, and we can save the peasants and are also ready to infiltrate this operation.
We position ourselves around the back of the wagon, knowing that the fellow inside cannot open the door himself, and all point threatening weapons in that direction. Our Rogue opens the door and, as soon as he does, a point of light comes out, exploding in to a Fireball! On seeing that the Fireball's explosion misses our Mage he exclaims, 'Thank goodness for that!', apparently happy that it merely engulfed our Fighter, Rogue, Cleric—all standing outside the wagon—and me on top of the wagon. Cheers, buddy! Nevertheless, our Mage was certainly helpful: after he saw this Fireball, his keen instincts kicked in and he announced, 'I sniff a wizard'. Huh, do you think so?
The enemy Mage was right at the back of the open wagon, hiding behind the piles of just-alive, captive peasants, although he had just vaporised about half of them with his own Fireball that bled back in to the wagon a little. Our Cleric was not happy with this and wanted to start helping the poor chaps who were paralysed and in danger of losing their lives. Stay your hand, we urged him, for first we must dispose of the threat of this enemy Mage. Our Fighter bravely drew back his bow-string and let loose an arrow, fiercely confident in his ability to hit the enemy Mage, even though he had a lot of cover behind what were effectively human shields. His magical, flaming arrow shot in to the wagon, and hit with a deadly thunk! It was a shame that he hit one of the peasants instead of the wizard. Still, at least he managed to kill something in this fight. We must be thankful for the small things.
And, yes, we managed to defeat the enemy Mage without further loss of innocent life, and we also found on his body the Pearl of Power that we had lost the previous night. No sign of our Rings, though.