We open our movie with our vaunted cast, Torel, Dra’kin, Elissa, Stak, Biminey continuing their journey homeward. Biminey glad to be alive on this fine day, feeling like he might have almost been dead just moments earlier.
The terrain grew rougher as they continued moving north toward home. Small rolling hills turning into craggy ravines and cliffs.
It is one such ravine, almost a canyon that they run into their first major issue. A band of goblins trying to be sneaky and the group spot each other at the same time about 100′ between them. The goblins scream and shout and attack. Moments later a giant rounds the bend in the canyon, all 11′ of him and the 8′ tree trunk he’s using as a club. A club that hurts a lot for those that try to stop it with their chests.
Boulders fly, clubs swing in might arcs and goblins die in rapid succession. Deep rough breathing from a nearby cave is heard as Stak passes near and when Dra’kin is knocked flying by a blow from the club landing in the mouth of the crack in the cave wall.
The hill giant retreats from battle leaning on his club, using the language of the goblins he asks if the group wants to join him, “Yu tough’ens, me yu jone up, we split 50/50.” Torel and Biminey are the only ones that can understand the large creature and Biminey translates the conversation to the others.
But dragonborn fury is not to be denied apparently and Elisssa cuts the discourse short and attacks the giant who roars out in fury and slams Torel back in righteous anger. The avenger goes flying through the air landing heavily on his ass. Regardless of their own inclinations the rest of the group backs the dragonborn’s play the giant soon lies dead at their feet.
A giant wineskin filled with the finest dwarven ale is recovered from the giant, a wineskin that they discover much to their delight refills every day with ale. In addition a magical belt is removed from the hill giants, a belt that Biminey re-sizes to fit Torel.
They continue their climb up through the mountains, avoiding or appearing too tough to take on and the rest of their journey, although tense and eventful yields no further obstacles and within days they arrive at the gates of their home town.
They’re welcomed as semi-heroes for having escaped the slavers and bought drinks and food and lodgings provided without cost to them.
The town Council summons them and there they meet Garon, Lerik and Teagon, the councilmen. Also, and un-coincidentally, they’re also the three richest men in the city. Lerik owns merchants and shops, Garon owns the majority of the fishing fleets, and Teagon runs the shipping, primarily by boat to the cities further inland but with some wagon trains.
During their interview it becomes obvious quickly that Lerik, a middle aged human male, doesn’t appear to like non-humans and in fact later on they discover that Lerik is a follower of Bain, a human-centric god who’s teachings propose that humans should be in charge of anything important.
Garon, another older human male, is intensely interested about the group, his daughter and son having also been stolen during the slaver raid during the Spring festival. Unfortunately the group does not recall his children, both in their early 20’s as having been part of their group although it’s possible they were among those first lost in the sealie attacks.  Those first couple of days after waking on board the ship were hectic and many people died, unknown and buried at sea.
Teagon, an eladrin also male, age unknown but mature seems indifferent to the group.
The group told their story, changing details and saying they sailed the slaver ship they’d woken on to the coast, landing it in Darkmith and then glossing over the details of their journey. Specifically keeping all details of the elemental ship out of their story.
Part of an old argument among the council comes out during their interview, Garon wants to hire mercenaries from the the mostly dwarvish settlement inland. He doesn’t want anyone else lost or to lose someone to slavers ever again, Lerik believes it would be a waste of money, the slavers have already hit the city and undoubtedly will have moved on. Teagon seems to be worried only about the cost, how can they afford it now. Perhaps after the fishing fleet’s harvest starts up in earnest.
Garon gives each of them 100 gold of his own money, assuming they have no money of their own after their harrowing escape to purchase necessities.
Torn steps forth and tells the group he’ll take charge of Soozin’s protection, as it turns out she’s an orphan now, her father was one of the one’s taken by the slavers and her mother died in childbirth. He intends to join the guards, his skills with a blade should be of use to them. Torel steps up and gives him 50 gold to provide for the two of them while the group figures out it’s next moves.
They decide to stay together, their thoughts on that elemental ship they left back in Darkmith. They spend a few days in town, getting reacquainted with old friends and lovers, Dra’kin renewing his relationship with Shük, a half-orc girl that favors her human side, while Biminey visits Sushanna, an acolyte of the Temple of Eris that he’s friendly with from his visits there going through the god of knowledge’s vast collections of scrolls and manuscripts.
Stak and Torel, both mostly alone in the city venture out together several times, gathering news of current events while Elisssa visits her clan, enjoying several celebrations of her safe return.
Stak and Torel among other things learns of a trader ship in the harbor which is rare in these times of unsafe travel, a typical year might see 4 or 5 trading ships from up or down the coast.
Dra’kin asks his sometimes girlfriend to look into Lerik, the man’s non-human bigotry bothers him, while Biminey uncovers in his trip to the Temple of Eris that all information on Darkmith is in the forbidden archives, Merkin, high priest of the temple blatantly refuses him access to those scrolls saying some knowledge should not be known.
A few days after their arrival they’re summoned before the council again, the council is obviously in disagreement but Garon informs the group of the losses they’ve taken on their trade ships returning from inland being taken by bandits and the gold taken.  He proposes that the group recover the gold if they can and he will keep 10%. Larceny is in their hearts as they ponder this, “Who’s to say how much we recover exactly?”. Lerik, the bigot, seems in favor of the idea only after his associate, a slightly oily human by the name of Tanner whispers to him about how “wouldn’t Bain approve if these beasts and snakes were killed trying to recover it? ” referring to Stak and Torel, both shifter born and Elisssa obviously. A whisper overheard by a couple of the sharper eared members of the group.
Teagon seems almost against the idea, saying it’s a waste of time, and they’d be throwing the groups lives away in vain.
The group tells the council they’ll consider the idea and give them an answer in a couple of days.
The ship in the harbor is visited, found to be carrying a high number of skilled fighters, perhaps uncommon or perhaps necessary for any ship to be able to sail the seas and make it safely from port to port. None of the group who see the ship can say for sure if it’s a slaver ship, a suspicion born of paranoia perhaps as Garon tells Dra’kin when the warlock visits him, pressing for Garon to get on board and search the ship. Garon agrees to consider the information and says he’ll try and arrange for a visit.
While discussing his inability to get into the archives he needs to get information on Darkmith and the elemental ships, Shük shrugs, “is that all?” and has one of her twin halfing lieutenants show up. Meri nods, “I can recover items from there for you, it’s a bit of a hassle, hard to get to even for me and I can’t remove much without it being noticed.”
They arrange for her to remove one scroll from several shelves a night and in that way they can zero in on the area that they need.
Torel and Stak interview known survivors of the bandit raids on the ships, finding out that no one before seems to have done much in the way of information gathering and by getting maps they’re able to narrow down the area where the ships are taken by quite a lot. They also find out that the ships that are taken are always ones in the top percentile of gold coins carried.
This arouse a lot of discussion and suspicion on who might be slipping information, or be behind the stolen gold shipments being stolen.
The group decides to go after the gold thieves, arranging for Meri to continue bringing out scrolls and a forger of Shük’s acquaintance to copy them for Biminey’s return.
After some discussion the group heads upstream to the area where the ships are taken and there Stak finds a trail that leads them to a hidden camp.  He sneaks close but not quite close enough to overhear an interesting conversation that occurs between a man dressed in city clothing who enters camp and appears to be warning the bandits that there is someone after them. The leader of the group turns and starts barking orders for the bandits to break camp.
Stak sneaks out to tell the group, noticing in passing a hidden archer he missed on the way in.
The group tries to stealth up to the clearing but are hopelessly incompetant and find the camp deserted although the bandits gear is still around. They circle the camp, spotting a couple of archers moving around as they do. Stak cuts through the camp and the trap is sprung. Bandits rise up out of shallow pits covered by bedrolls.
The group is dispersed in all directions while the bandits tend to focus their attacks better and although the bandits take their losses in the end Elissa is down, a glaive at her throat while another rests over her heart and a razor tipped arrow is pointed at her left eye.
The eladrin, seemingly bored, speaks loudly enough to be heard across the clearing, “Surrender now or the dragonborn dies.”
With Elissa down and certain to die, Biminey down, bleeding from multiple wounds, Stak with a growing puddle of blood growing under his feet and Torel facing two more archers solo and bloodied, the group drops their weapons and is captured.
They’re expertly tied up, all their gear except clothing removed and bags put over their heads and that’s where we leave our party to await their fate at the hands of their captors.
[DM's Afterword: This outcome was unexpected although at one time I did have some thoughts on increasing the size of the force to make capture a higher percentage chance that I was thinking it would be. As a result I can work with this outcome, just didn't expect it to happen. It does show the necessity of focused play in 4th edition. ALL of the bandits were hurt, most approaching bloodied status but the damage was simply too spread out. Since even someone down to 1 hp still deals full damage, hurting them doesn't do much, removing someone from the battle is what makes a difference.
The aftermath of this is that, obviously, the group is going to lose their gear. I'm so NOT a believer in captors conveniently storing all the capturee's gear in an unlocked chest in the next room and leaving a key hanging just out of but not quite reach to the cell door. I think that's lame. But because I'm granting bonuses to the characters inherently as a function of being heroes, it doesn't matter. Gear only gives them gimmicks the way I do it, it doesn't impact their base attacks and defenses etc. Sometimes gimmicks are useful but this way they're not necessary.
Because of the holidays the next session will likely be on January 2nd. Stay tuned to see how our plucky but disorganized heroes get out of this mess. ]
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