We started by getting Kharn caught up.  He made it to the Vestoni camp where he parked the wagon.  This camp was run by a young man rather than a Madame Eva type.  They had an expert bowyer elf traveling with them.  As Kharn changed his clothes in an effort to look less Vestoni, he was approached by a man.  His teenage daughter had gone missing.  Evidently, she often snuck into the city, sometimes spending the night.  But she hadn’t come back for a couple of days.  She had recently befriended a local fisherman.  Kharn promised to look into it, adding it to our growing list.  Next, he had to get into the city.  He went through the same process and other than the smartass out of character remarks by him and the peanut gallery, he had no problems.  He was at the west gate which happened to be near the orphanage so we ran into him without any issues.  Speaking of lists, we summarized ours on our way to the Blue Water Inn.  The hour was getting late.  At the top was the missing bones to restore the protections of the church.  That meant talking to the coffin maker to whom they were sold.  There were also 3 orphans who had gone missing, probably due to the demon we vanquished last time.  The bones seller had hired someone to look for them.  We also wanted to visit the toymaker to inquire about the dolls that looked like Kharn and his sister.  And we still had that sister with us who felt safer with us rather than an unprotected church.

The inn was more of a bar that served stew with rooms upstairs.  They only had 8 beds, spread into 3 rooms but luckily, we were the only out of towners.  Lord Q insisted on his own room so a bed was moved from a small room into the big room.  The NPC would room with the raccoon.  But there was no rest for the heroes as we started talking to people and getting more tasks.  The owner’s wine had run out and he asked that if we went out of town, to check on the Wizard Winery.  We ran into the wolf hunters who had been hired to find the orphans.  They were “working on it” and if they had any leads, they did not share them.  It just so happens that the missing girl hung out here and played with the inn owners’ boys.  She sometimes slept in the shed which had no clues.  That drunk fisherman was named Bluto.  Local Ezera knew where he lived.  Kharn also mentioned that he’d heard that some dark elves were in the city so that went on Ambrus’s list.  And some more.  The more we heard about this girl, the more worrisome that story sounded so it moved to the top of the list.  We searched his house and found nothing.  The only other lead was that he could be fishing on the lake to the north.  Ezera asked the guards and they said he did leave recently, with a big bag of squirming “bait” about the size of a young girl in a sack.  Some guards.  The gate was closed due to the late hour so we went over the wall and to the lake.

So, the lake encounter started as a “skill challenge” which never quite works in the system.  People have somewhere between a combined 4 and 6 skills but dozens of powers.  (class, subclass, race, feats, spells, artifacts, etc.)  So, everyone wanted to act with powers but instead we had to wait for the scene to be set.  We saw the fisherman in the middle of the lake throw a wiggling sack into the water and could see it start to sink.  And we could do nothing.  And then it was an athletics roll to row out there, perception roll to find the sack, medicine roll to save her, etc.  No one could go twice but with our big party, not everyone got to go.  The upshot, although it was a painful process, was that she was brought back to shore and revived.  (Dan: Karn rolled first to row the boat close, then Zoltan rolled perception to target the sack, then Q rolled swimming with advantage to reach the girl... and failed.  This failure resulted in the sack getting targeted by the fisherman with an oar hit.  So Kaladin flew out and rolled acrobatics to intercept the fisherman's oar strike.  Apparently, a failure would have knocked him out but a success meant it was just a glancing strike.  Then Karn's sister and Zoltan rolled medicine to device the girl.)  Not that she was that grateful.  She didn’t seem very concerned about the whole thing.  Unfortunately, Lord Q had chosen to stay in the lake to try to decoy Bluto so when the Water Demon emerged and started attacking, we couldn’t run for dry land and leave him for dead.  This was a high-level ancient god sort of thing with legendary actions.  One of those actions was an enthralling attack which Loki failed his save.  (Dan: Q got enthralled first.  He failed and was promised a fun time down in the lake depths.  Tentacle sex jokes ensued.  Fortunately, it seems a short-lived effect since you make a save each round)  So, when Lord Q finally got back to shore, we still couldn’t run because Loki was trying to join him in the water.  He transformed into a fish to do so but Lord Q hit him with collateral damage from a Green Flame blade.  Since a fish had 1 hit point, he turned back into Loki.  Then Ambrus hit him with a Laughter spell.  Then Kharn grabbed him and the rescued girl hit him with Hold Person.  Somewhere in there, he was also diseased by the demon.  (Dan: I remember it was just before you got enthralled.  Still, the good news was this was the first monster in ages that didn't take half damage.  It just had incredible hit points, 4 attacks per round, and a +9 to hit.) So, he was jacked up to a new record level.  But the beast was half dead and about the time we could start running with Loki in tow, it just sank back into the depths.  (Dan: You make it sound like he was running like a sissy but we were actually thinking that after all that damage he took and that we took, he was still half alive and we were wondering how to effectively run away ourselves.)