We ran through the thickets for half an hour and finally the voices of the Druids receded and were no longer audible.
Suddenly a branch cracked: Someone was here! Apoqulis and Heidel confronted…
…an Elf!
She identified herself as an Adventurer, not a Druid: Aretain Enlor, hailing from the area north of Morgansfort. Lucky for us: she decided to accept that we — these strange people in the forest who carried a bound and gagged woman — were good guys, and joined us.

Interrogation

The Druid refused to answer questions but threatened that we had only minutes. We should better let her go right now and she might consider being nice.
Then an owl appeared — and we went on running. Aretain fed the owl and it flew away.
Alas, not forever. The bird re-appeared off and on.
We fled northwards to the edge of he forest, interrogating the Druid in little breaks on the way before gagging her again and running onwards.
Mostly she resisted, and sometimes she tricked us into explaining ourselves instead of answering any questions. But we finally did learn something.

These Blood Druids had their elf captive in order to sacrifice him. When his blood would burn to ash they would be able to summon a powerful entity, so it could purge all weakness and everything harmful to nature from these lands.
More powerful than last time, she said. She called it a great opportunity for the elf, but it did not appear she had asked him if he saw it that way too.

Mentioning Azequia, we got a reaction from her:
She knew Azequia, they had been on the same team, but no longer. More details were not forthcoming. She seemed to have respect for her old comrade.

Morals

Pondering this, we continued to flee until we reached the end of the forest. There smart people would have killed the Blood Druid and moved out of the Druids’ abode to rest in the open country where our ranged weapons would count. But we made camp in the thickets and struggled with our consciences: Can we actually kill someone whom we have in our custody? Shouldn’t we care for her and bring her to the authorities?

In other words: We suffered from 21st-century-itis.
Our morals tied our hands, even in the face of someone willing to do blood sacrifices in order to “purge the weak”, and even though there was a possibility that she was needed for the ritual (so without her it could not happen!) we could not bring ourselves to do what needed to be done.

Obviously, we, the party, and the barbarians in Stormwing, the people in the village, and everyone in Morgansfort — all of these people were what she wanted to purge: harmful to nature. Still, we kept her around.

The owl from earlier showed up again, and Apoqulis talked with it. He wanted to enlist her to spy for us. It said that the druids were coming, and the owl admitted that it had already told them where to find us.

Magicks

It was only minutes. When they came, Apoqulis and Heidel attempted to negotiate and exchange the boss-Druid for the captured elf. But the druids scoffed at the very idea and said: “We’ll see about that.” They stopped negotiating. And they cast.

They cast Entangle from the Left.
They cast Fairy Fire from the Right.
We were lit up and tied down.

Heidel had already doused our captive in oil while we waited, for psychological leverage. But now he set her ablaze. Dwarfs are made of sterner stuff than us weak-willed humans.
As the druids howled in rage and moved in for the kill, Aretain and Darion pitied the burning and screaming woman, struggled free from the Entanglement and attempted to mercy-kill the druid. But we both failed, suffered light burns, and Darion got hit by a druid-arrow for his trouble.

They hit us with another Entangle, and we had to cut or burn ourselves free a second time, while their friend still burned right there, and while they still shot at us.
Finally Apoqulis found his rhythm. He broke out of the Defense. He closed with one of the archers and struck her down.

Aretain managed to execute the burning Druid with a slingshot bullet to the head.
Just as the druids closed in. In the following struggle Matrius sniped another Druid archer, Aretain suffered a serious arrow wound while defending, and had to seek cover, teetering on the brink of 0 HP.
Then Heidel struck down another Druid.
They lost their morale roll, and the last three druids ran away, one of them wounded.

During the fight the Eco-Warriors had freed our Donkey, and now he was gone. Apoqulis wanted to go and save the donkey first, but Darion opposed this: he and Heidel were both sure that the donkey would not be harmed by the druids — but the captured Elf would. So we had to prioritize the Elf.

Apoqulis relented under protest. So despite no sleep that whole night, we rested just long enough for the clerics to re-spell, and then we set off to return south to the sacrificial site, four hours deep into the forest.

Only six of the druids had followed us. That meant three or four would be back there still, keeping the place ready for the sacrifice, keeping the knives sharp and the coals hot.
We would have to go get him, and Apoqulis was already drafting tactics. He wondered how to use our knowledge to maximum advantage, but his reasonings were too complex for simple Darion to fully grasp.

But if the elf is still alive, if even still there, if we can safe the captive, all this we will see next time,

in Morgansfort.

Header image: Screenshot from BFRPG western lands campaign