Picking up where we left off, the party, now reduced to simply Ghesh and Sephira, meet Laurence’s traveling companion Horo outside with the wagon. After meeting them, Horo eats an apple and falls asleep in the back of the wagon.

Moving outside the town, the party travels west, and begins heading up the Russ mountains. Along the way, they are confronted by a man wearing an official looking cloak, demanding that they pay a toll of 200 gold or be arrested by the city guard. They think this sounds suspicious, and resist. Ghesh tells the man that he would rather eat the man then pay, and Sephira cries about the state of the man’s tale, figuring him to be an official guard. She then notices that the man’s armor is rusted and worn, and takes it as a measure of how little town guards are paid. Laurence mentions to Ghesh that the man’s tale seems suspicious, and they force the man into whistling for help.

He calls for aid, and a Spiretop Drake enters the field, trying to take a chunk out of Ghesh’s head. Ghesh and Sephira move forward to confront the two while Laurence keeps the horse calm and Horo sleeps in the back of the cart. After a furious round of combat, the man whistles again and he is reinforced by a squad of four Kobolds.

Meanwhile, Apothus is left behind by the Kobolds when the hear the man’s call. He is tied up in the camp of the muggers, and manages to get out of his bonds and recover his equipment. Following the Kobolds, he see the scene on the road, where he quickly jumps in and helps out. Ghesh torches the Drake, while the party deals with the man and the kobolds. He nearly takes out Sephira, but she manages to finish him off before he does.

Afterwards, the party greets Apothus, where he mentions that he was heading to town to look for work before he was attacked by muggers. Laurence quickly offers him a job, seeing an opportunity for another strong arm, and Apothus accepts.

Later that night, the weather turns to rain, coming down hard in the beginning of Ioon, the Season of Rain. The party decides to press forward through the rain for a bit, before coming upon a flooded stream that had escaped its bounds and covered the path. They quickly decide that attempting to cross the stream with the wagon would prove disastrous, and Horo finally proves her worth by finding an old tower keep for them to take shelter in. Settling into an entryway with the wagon, the party quickly falls asleep, leaving Apothus on watch.

He explores some, and hears a chittering sound coming from inside the tower. Going into the door a little to examine it, the sounds stop. He goes back to wake Sephira to tell her about what he heard, only for them to find nothing later on. As they turn to go back to the others, they hear a wet, organic sounding slap behind them as something falls to the floor. Returning quickly, they find Horo awake, wondering where they had gone off to.

Explaining the situation, Sephira gets locked in the dark in the hallway behind them, where she feels her fingers tingle from a strange substance that she puts her hand into. Calling for the others, they open the door to find a strange, jelly-like creature attempting to eat her hand. Feeling the light, the creature moves off, while the others follow it back to a large open room in the tower. They poke it a few times, while exploring the room, attempting to decide what to do with the creature. They find a pile of nails and metal bands in the corner of the room, and decide that the creature must have eaten the wood that the items had been made of. While Sephira returns to wake Ghesh, in an attempt to have him set fire to the creature, Apothus examines the stairs and finds a ruined body on the balcony, from some creature of unknown origin.

After some discussion of what to do with the ooze creature, Ghesh breaths some fire on it, causing it to spook and slide off. Apothus tosses the body down, and the creature eats it, turning much less translucent then it did before. By this point, the others move up the steps to figure out what is upstairs, curious over what else is in the building.

They find the upstairs is much more cluttered, and filled with broken chairs, tables, cloth, and other odds and ends. They open the first two doors and find them both filled with a total of 6 goblins, who get poisoned, flamed, and electrocuted before giving up. Moving upwards, they find that the rest of the goblins have heard them, and are much more prepared then their brethren. They have taken the chance to set up terrain and cover, and mob the party when they enter.

A mob of goblins hold up the party long enough for two with javelins to deal some strong damage, while a goblin archer in the back leaped upon the back of a large size Tangler Beetle. He rode it around the room, firing crossbow bolts, while the other goblins fought the party. They quickly dealt critical damage to Apothus, who had to be covered by Sephira, while Ghesh held the center. Horo proved her combat abilities by changing into a wolf and pouncing on the beetle, only to be tied up by it’s sticky webbing.

While Apothus dealt with the remaining goblins, Ghesh and Sephira moved onto the Beetle and it’s rider, and helped Horo overwhelm the enormous insect. After an blast of light from Ghesh and a furious assault from Horo, they managed to down the beast, cutting down it’s rider when it tried to flee.

After finishing their exploration, they move downstairs, only to find that the bodies falling from two stories up had become a feast, and now there were two oozes below. They left them be, and returned to their interrupted rest.