'I am the Bugbear Slayer!' says our wizard, with some measure of hubris.
Not that we entirely doubt this claim of a solo victory against the bugbear, particularly when we were all in the same combat, but the wizard's status of hero is a little shaken when, in the same round, two goblins stabbing at his calves cause the great slayer to drop to the ground unconscious.
'What happened?', asks the son.
'Well', says his dad, 'a huge bugbear' (it's medium, not huge) 'charged me' (there's no charging in fifth edition) 'and killed me with a critical hit' (okay, that bit happened).
Looking in to a cave, we see little but darkness. That's okay, as we have a wizard who can cast light as a cantrip. 'Cast it on a pebble, so that we can cover it and snuff the light if we need to.'
'What, so when we round a corner to see 50 goblins and kill the light, they can see us and we can't see them? That sounds like a reasonable plan.'
We've captured a goblin that ambushed us, and question him about his camp's defences. 'Are there any guards on the way to the camp?'
'No.'
'Break his fingers and ask again', says the paladin.
A bit of damage, a bit of scorching. I need some healing. Aggar taps me with his wand, healing 2 points of damage. He taps me again, healing another 2 points of damage. This is a slow process. A third tap, 7 points of healing.
'What a waste', says Thrak.
'Not really, I was still 5 points down at that point.'
'No, I meant it was a waste to heal a gnome.'
How soon we forget our promises.
Continuing deeper in to the fire forest brings us to another stone bridge. Well, nearly. As we approach, a couple of trees at the edge of the bridge have their trunks explode, collapsing to block our path with a barrier of flames.
At the same time, Aggar notices that Crysten is acting curiously. She appears to be having a vision. She sees a giant flaming stag bounding out of the trees, goring... and she points at our barbarian, Thrak.
'Oh, ok then.'
'Yes, shall we move on?' If only it were that simple. The flaming trees still block our path, and now a wall of fire has appeared behind us. The situation looks a bit grim, made a little worse by some flaming creatures bounding towards us through the barrier. Perhaps it's time to see if the rest of the vision holds.
I cast an illusion, having 'Thrak' dodge out of the way of an object that obscures the real Thrak, moving the illusion towards the position where Crysten's vision saw our barbarian gored. As the illusion moves in to position, a fiery spear falls from the sky, straight through where Thrak would be standing.
'So as soon as my illusion got there', says Thrak, 'the spear landed?'
'Whose illusion?' Once again, our barbarian wants to take credit for a useful spell.
'So far, we've saved a man, killed a bat, fought a bearded devil...'
'We didn't 'save' a man. We cut his head off.'
'Yes, saving him.' In the same way that his black bear 'disarmed' a trap for us, I suppose.
Deeper in the fire forest, a stone bridge crosses a gorge. We have little choice but to trust the bridge, already broken in places, despite the stress the continuous fire surrounding it must have caused the stone. Most of us get across safely, having found and avoiding some weak spots, when from a cave below us a swarm of flaming bats appears.
A swarm! That's okay, all we need is a source of fire to—oh. They're already on fire and don't seem to be affected. Never mind, we have other tricks up our sleeves.
I cast Speak with Animals! 'Piss off, bats.'
'No.'
'Sorry lads, I tried my best.' Thankfully, however, that isn't quite my best. Having just gained access to second-level spells, I have Hypnotic Effect learnt. I cast the spell and a cone of dazzling colours flies from my fingers, overwhelming the bats' low-light vision. The swarm is fascinated, letting Aggar cross the bridge and the entire party retreat from the swarm safely.
That was a stroke of luck. A bit of analysing the situation after-the-event even makes us think it was perhaps our only chance. Thank goodness the swarm of bats fell under the hypnotic effect.
'I'll never call our gnome illusionist useless again', says Thrak.
'Yes you will', comes the chorus of replies. Despite his efforts, Thrak ain't no wizard, and we easily save against his feeble illusion.
We enter the fire forest, a forest that has been burning for decades. That seems peculiar, if we're being honest, and are intrigued as to what could cause this. Unfortunately, the level of knowledge Salvador can bring to bear on the subject is that a forest burning for forty years isn't natural. Thanks, Sal.
As we progress a little way in to the forest, protected from the heat by some potions, we see ahead of us some charred bodies on the ground. 'Are they dead?'
I'm told, with chuckles I don't think are entirely warranted, that, yes, they are obviously dead. Whatever they were. 'Can we tell what they were?', Thrak asks.
Our cleric moves forwards to investigate further. As Aggar crouches down to examine the charred remains, a blackened arm reaches up to him, startling everyone around. Well, almost everyone.
'Oh, I see. They're obviously dead, are they?'
'They obviously looked dead.'
'I didn't ask if they looked dead, I asked if they were dead. Don't blame me for this one, Aggar. I had you covered.'
'Ulagor gives you a crash course on the controls of the glider.'
'Sounds great, but can he give us a different kind of course?'
We manage to get the glider launched, which isn't too difficult, seeing as how we just pushed it off the side of a five-hundred foot high mountain. Keeping it flying is the difficult bit. So is landing, apparently.
'The glider wasn't designed to land.' Um, what? 'There was a magical arrester mechanism in the mountain', of course there was, in a low-magic setting. 'It's probably best to aim for a lake.'
'Where are the parachutes?'
'There aren't any parachutes. They haven't been invented yet.'
'Unlike the glider.'