Lia wanders up behind Stena… “Whatcha doooin’?…”

”Can I help?…”.

Stena takes on foraging responsibilities saying as they go,

"Bring us near to the larger islands and aye'll check them."

She is surprised that she seems to be able to see a bit further than she could but keeps that to herself.

If they come across any larger, likely islands she'll have the party stop while she checks them,  or if it's the edge of the lake. She'll have them stay a short distance from shore while she checks, following streams that flow into the lake knowing that water often means food. She knows it also means things eating that food so she moves stealthily, and invisible.

If Lia comes along Stena has her checking on her own heading the same direction, knowing she'll surely attract the attention of trouble first. Trouble Stena will deal with. She'll keep the bard on course by occasionally throwing rocks in the direction she should go.

Stealth (advantage): 24

Survival (advantage): 15

Lia does exactly as Stena asks and is a surprisingly attentive student.

((Let me know if I need to roll anything))

((Stealth and Perception?))

Lia:

Stealth: 26

Perception: 18 

((Too focused on the sneaking!))

Lia and Stena are the shore team for a series of excursions as you travel, checking out potentially promising clusters of fungi as the boat nears, stopping at those that seem easily reachable. During one of the stops, Lia was being extra conscious of moving slowly and quietly, and soon found she'd lost track of Stena entirely. Freezing, she scanned her surroundings, and realized she was out of sight of the boat... the water must just be over there... or was it over there? Oh, spoons, she got all turned around! Lia was about to bolt from cover and try to find Stena or the others, when Stena makes an appearance to wave Lia over to the patch of ripplebark she'd found. Phew!

Neth finally decides to leave his recluse, his mood only lightened by his rumbling stomach. He walks down to the deck to investigate what everyone else in the party is doing. 

((Neth’s closest ally and his staunchest critic both away on an excursion too))

Galingal turns from his view of the small island where he has been using a pole to keep the boat close to the edge but not close enough that it's hitting rock.

He watches Neth approach, measuring what he sees. 

"You travel alone?" Galingal finally asks. "If alone, how stay away from slavers?"

Neth looks from his left to his right, carefully scanning for anyone attempting to tackle him overboard. 

“I’m, uh.. fairly good at keeping to the shadows. The whi..  my pet would also help me find paths. I may have deterred the odd slaver or shambling dead denizen of the deep from trying me as well.”

Neth notices it’s quiet aboard the ship.

”Where is the dwarf? Did people go to those islands?”

"Let's get this harvested and back to the boat."

Stena will gather all of the ripplebark and head back to the boat.

She'll glare at Neth initially but after that studiously ignores him.

She give Ranadar a nod before settling the food and gesturing towards the poles.

"Let's get moving. "

((How much did we harvest? We had 3 days of rations before, hopefully got a couple more?))

Lia climbs aboard after Stena, trying for all the world to look like one of the survival crew. She may have even speared a little grime artistically on one cheek and dramatically pants and puffs like she’s had a gruelling day’s… survival-…-…ing…

She greets some of the NPCs with a macho clap on the shoulder, or a fist-bump. She pulls Galingal’s forearm into a full on beast-master-grip arm/hand shake, nodding and ‘haha!’ing it off.

When she gets to Neth she unnecessarily gestures to the sky with her chin in greeting, with an ‘it was nothing’ “Hey!…”.

”Just… uh.. got food, you know…”.

She pauses with Neth, (fake catching her breath and wiping the grime even more artistically off/down her face). “Everything okay here?…”.

((Survivalist performance check: 18 ))

((Haha!))

Galingal looks from Stena to Lia and back to Stena, eyebrow raised noticing Stena appears to be carrying all of the food they found, yet is not nearly as dirty and winded as Lia appears to be.

But he doesn't say anything about it, just nods, and helps keep the boat steady as they come back aboard. 

He then helps with the poles to get them on their way.

Neth looks at his long dirty nails and pretends to be cleaning them as Stena walks by. 

He responds to Lia “Oh, hi. Did you, forage a lot of supplies? Do you need help? Where did you put it all down?” He looks to her empty arms and then behind her, expecting to see bundles of food on the deck. 

“Back breaking work, that is.”

Lia senses she’s been rumbled. “Well I’m just still learning!… But.. we did come back alive… which is always a bonus!…”, she grins just a little. “And we do have food… No, maybe not technically ‘loads’ or ‘enough’…”, she makes exaggerated air-quotes. “But… it’ll see us through another few days… maybe…”. She stands with her hands on her hips, ‘ta da!’.

”Okay fine!… But next time you want a whole city of easily suggestible religious zealots to rampage against something they already hate?!… Don’t come running to me!…”.

There’s a second when you think she’s serious, and then she cracks up at the absurdity of the last few days, and instead of serious you start to wonder whether she might not just actually be starting to go slightly mad.

She seems to find the whole thing rather funny anyway, chuckling quietly to herself.

Neth realizes his tone might have come across poorly. “You guys did great. And anyways, it’s incredible we are all still alive.” Neth says the next part a bit too loudly “Despite SOME person’s best efforts.”

He pauses for a moment as if listening for something.

”We need to figure out why any of this happened in the first place. Why were we drawn together? Did we all run into each other by chance?”

He falls silent, listening again.

”I heard someone mention pretending to be traders. I may be able to help with that. I come from a family of traders.”

After ignoring all of Lia's theatrics Stena does pause in getting her pole set to push off to give the back of Neth's head an icy look. She doesn't waste much more than that on the tiefling though, a problem for another time.

Galingal keeps an eye out over the water as they pole their way along. They don't need to be caught unaware by 'friends' again. But he speaks back over his shoulder at the same time

"Want know how demon in Sloobludop," Galingal says. "If here are more?"