Star Metal Marauders- Highway Harvest

Bjorn stares in silence out of his tent, trying to work out what causes a person to talk like Sparhawk. Eventually he crawls out, and hauls from his bag the dead mimic's heart, which has now regenerated to a lump the size of a human baby. Its surface is covered in what seems to be tree bark and the broken shards of the glass jar that was its container.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to think more... Flexibly," he mutters to the Paladin as he kicks the lump. It abruptly leaps off the ground and transforms, ejecting some kind of black goo and glass dust before landing on the ground as a gleaming, five foot long steel sword with an ornate golden handle.

Etched into the blade is its name: Aegweth (in Sylvan, roughly "compensation for having a small penis," or more succinctly, "Compensator").

He lets out a very quiet sigh.

“I’m a paladin.” Said Sparhawk  

as if that explained everything. 

“Don’t worry, your on my good side.”

He smiles at Bjorn. 
“compensating for some shortcomings?”

Bjorn's eyes bulge as he realizes Sparhawk can read the language of the fey folk. He shoos the sword away like a misbehaving animal, and it slithers behind a rock and disappears. "The old crone still can't accept that SHE LOST, FAIR AND SQUARE!" He calls out as if someone's nearby, listening.

He moodily starts packing up his tent.

Sparhawk grabs some breakfast and seems to relax a bit as he lets go of the horror of last night.

"My friends, lets talk about Bernard, the bugbear and the bandits who seem to know him. Whats our plan of attack?"

Vars, catching a glimpse of the sword before the it slithers away, let’s out a snort. It is unclear if the noise was an attempt to hide laughter.

Shaking his head, he looks as if he is going to ask Bjorn something before pausing and instead turning to Sparhawk, “Yes, we should consider our primary mission.. the bugbear. However, it will be difficult to come up with a plan of attack when we still have yet to locate him. We should first get on the trail and worry about how to deal with him after we find him.”

He pauses, hesitating briefly before pulling out the map he bought from the old man he met after teleporting to the tower. “Perhaps we can take a small detour on our way there.” 
He unrolls the map, laying it out wherever rock or fallen tree is available to use as a makeshift table. “No harm in trying to make some coin we don’t have to pay tax on right? Of course, we can always wait and stop here on the way back…assuming we come back this way. I don’t think this treasure is going anywhere.” He shrugs, looking at each of his comrades as he waits for a response. 

"I think we should focus on Bernard. The longer we take, the harder it will be to track him down."

"Aye, the bastard's probably feasting and celebrating in his cave for now, but how long until he leaves? And how long until he sells the stolen cargo?"

Bjorn comes over to view the map. "Think that bomb could cause a cave-in? Then all we gotta do is wait."

Sparhawk strokes his chin with one hand, and unconsciously strokes Frangi with the other, perched on his shoulder like a parrot.

"Our bandit friends seem to work for Bernard. Its possible they are heading back to report to him. If so, they should lead us right to him." Vars, where does the detour go?" Do we have any way of tracking the bandits that got away? Also, some of our less fortunate friends left us some donations, so we shouldn't have too much trouble.  Can anyone identify these vials of liquid?" He pulls out the two vials and hold them out for inspection.

"I don't think I mentioned Bernard to them; did you? They'd have no reason to warn him about us."

Bjorn looks at the vials, but with no training in any of the natural sciences or the arcane, he's just as stumped as Sparhawk. "That was thoughtful of them. Think it's magic?"

Sparhawk smiles at Born. "I disagree. If I found a competent group rummaging through the house I was paid to spy on, I would report back to my employer.  In this case, I suggest they were paid to watch the house and see if anything suspicious happened.  It is clear we were not common thieves.  Also, the fat apple eating leader was certainly bragging about bringing me back for Bernard's new play thing. So...I'm thinking there's half a chance they are just ahead of us. If we do some tracking, we may find some fresh leads. Then just follow the trail to our big harry friend."

(Yay, it worked. lol. There's the map for everyone.) 

Vars eyes the vials, "Did you get them off that wizard?" 

"If we are interested in following this detour, my guess is that we will have to stop here," he points to the key on the map. "Perhaps there is a key, or a hidden door here. Might lead to this door-looking image over here." He moves his finger to where the drawing of the door is located next to the waterfall. "But my guess is that the treasure is over where this star is."

He shrugs, thinking to himself, These are questions I should have asked when I bought this blasted thing. To late now...

“Hum” says Sparhawk looking over the map.  Could be an opportunity or even a hidden way to move forward unseen.  
He will study the two potions and see

If there are any fresh tracks on the road.  

“the potions were on the dwarf. He also loaned me his warhammer.  Let me know if anyone needs it.  I’m more of a sword guy”

At some point during the conversation Frangipani slipped back into her genasi form and fell off of Sparhawks shoulder with a surprised chirrup.

" I did not like any of that. Not one bit."

" We have something that belongs to them, I can try and track them by scent if we can find their trail again...."

" How is everyone feeling?  Sorry I kinda panicked there for a bit.  that tentacle thing was the scariest thing I've seen since.......well.....Mother."

"Well.. at least you know your mother." says, Sparhawk. "I don't remember my parents. Anyway, its best to put things like that behind you. I'm sure we are all feeling better after our rest." He hands her the battle axe and potions. "These are some of the items we aquired from the dead ones... but this net here....that was from the leader and he is still alive!"

"Pah. Parents. You've got a parent right there." Bjorn gestures at the net. "Just wants to hold you down. Go on, let it embrace you if you're so lonely. Let me know how that goes."

He gazes out to the open road. "If Bernard's boys came through here, they didn't take anything from us in the night. That seems unlikely so I'm guessing they either took a different route, or stayed in the city."

Here is the official route map with your camp location marked. You are currently camped between Luskan and Blackstone crossing. You know Bernard went up the river, at least for an unknown distance. Each red hash mark on the road is approximately 1 mile.

Vars rolls his eyes at the mention of parents, "Who needs parents? They just get in the way of your dreams, forcing their own on you all the while never letting you rise to your full potential." He places a hand on the map, "Sorsha, what do you think? I'm not going to push to go after this treasure, but Sparhawk does have a point. If this does have a hidden passage here, it could be a way to move forward in an unforeseen way." 

Sparhawk laughs at Bjorn's comment, a deep guttural half-orc laugh. (His sharp teeth and broken nose makes his face look strange. Funny yet kind of disturbing at the same time, as if he was laughing at an inside joke).

"Regardless of Var's suggestion, we can certainly head toward the split in the river." Sparhawk points on the map.  "Maybe 30 miles but our bugbear friend may be anywhere before then. Perhaps Frangipani or one of you can indulge my suspicion with this net or tracks. Lets see if it leads to any little fishes with apples in their mouths. (the guy that attacked us with the bandits). Sorsha?" 

Sparhawk examines the road forward for any fresh tracks. (Survival check?) 9

Sorsha listens to the somewhat chaotic discussion that quickly leaves the topic of cooperation. "So this is it?" She says to Vars looking at his map. "No information other than it would lead you to wealth?" She gives him an incredulous look. "If there is even any truth to what is drawn on this piece of parchment I can see a key, a door and a star but we have no idea what that is supposed to mean right? If we're not even sure what we're looking for and with a map that is most likely not very precise we would be lucky indeed to find the places shown on this map, particularly the star up in Starmetal Hills." She says with a tired sigh. "However, as far as we know Bernard travels up the river Mirar towards Mirabar and the key and the door seems to be on our way to Mirabar so I suppose we could keep a lookout when we pass these areas on the map." She continues, then getting up. "I need to take care of something but I'll be back shortly." She says walking down to the river. "And I don't think there is any point looking for tracks on this road. The road between Luskan and Mirabar is fairly heavily travelled I think and we are just looking for one man that we don't even know whether he is going by foot, coach or horse, or even if he would have travelled this road at all." She adds before vanishing down to the river.