"Well... fork." 

Jan turns the chest over in her hands, listening and feeling for anything shifting, but pondering how such an item could be made... and more importantly, opened. 

Arcana: 16

Jan takes her time examining the chest more closely, angling it to catch the light in different ways. She eventually concludes that the lid is magically sealed. But she catches something else as well. A very faint, almost invisible, and barely of a different colour than the metal itself, set of small markings circle the chest, right where the lid meets the main body.

If she had to guess, and she wouldn't be going far out on a limb if she did, Jan would suggest these are protective gylphs of some kind.

She will work up faithfully transcribe all the glyphs and markings she can find, taking as detailed notes on their interconnection as possible... This seems like a job for Ethel, and if they are leaving the chest in here for now, she wants to give her friend the best chance of figuring out how it's warded.

(Second Arcana roll from Jan please)

Avaria starts to get worried as Jan is gone longer than she would have liked.  "Is there anyway to contact her while she is in that space?  Anyone else getting worried??"

Arcana: 10

Add bardic to it if this is her last crack at getting it right...

8

Marrin shrugs,

"I think she can hear us. She did last time, anyhow."

She answers during her salvaging.

"You find anything good or with a name on it?"

The group finds nothing that identifies any of the prior inhabitants, but that's not overly surprising. It's not common for anyone to carry any sort of identification in this area, much like the party doesn't either.

QuietWalnut does watch the search with what might be interest but doesn't say anything.

"Do you want to travel in the night?" QuietWalnut eventually asks. "Your little walking trunks will mean it takes you longer than a tree to get where you need to get to and if you do not leave soon you will be traveling in the dark."

Inside the ring, Jan finishes copying the markings on the chest. She feels pretty confident that she got them correct.

((Marrin get her lumberjack/Jill outfit?))

"I think we're ready to go, Quietwalnut."

She looks to make sure before moving to the horses.

(Everyone ready to move on? Is Marrin carrying the ring or is Jan coming out?)

(Marrin will carry it and lead her horse.)

Jan sighs and places the chest back down on a cushion, emerging from the ring holding Marrin's hands.

"Well, I'm not dead, but it was less productive than I'd hoped."

Avaria breathes a sigh of relief as Jan rejoins the group.  Moving her horse a little closer to Marrin and Jan, "What happened?"

She eyes Quietwalnut to make sure they don't get upset about the appearance of their friend.

QuietWalnut notes the appearance of Jan but doesn't seem particularly disturbed by it. Once she notes that everyone has their horses and ponies ready and have their gear all secured, she begins walking along the path that you all had originally be heading along.

However, after about 30 minutes of travel, QuietWalnut turns west and walks straight at the thick forest. For a moment, you all wonder how on earth you're going to get yourselves, let alone the horses and ponies through the dense wood. At the last second, the very trees seem to lean back from QuietWalnut, allowing a narrow path to appear. There's just enough room to travel single file. There's no sign of a trail ahead until QuietWalnut takes each step of her massive trunk-legs. And she turns north, west, north, east, in an increasingly difficult number of steps to ever hope to easily navigate back through.

Though that appears to be irrelevant considering that anyone looking behind them sees no trace of the path that they're taking. It's as if the woods have swallowed up the path behind you.

Hammerdasher does not look happy at this turn of events and appears to be in whispered conversation with his pony.

Soren looks resigned to this course of events - not upset by the lack of a clear return path but not thrilled with it either.

"We mustn't lose site of QuietWalnut," Geffroi eventually says quietly, "or we'll never find our way out of here."

Without a direct line on the sun, it's not easy to mark the passage of time in here, but Ula's stomach starts grumbling and Hammerdasher takes that as a queue.

"Can we ask her to stop for lunch?" he says, looking at Jan, Marrin, Ethel and Avaria for confirmation that's a good idea.

Marrin is startled by Jan's appearance but gives her hand a quick squeeze on recognizing her.

(Unless she's still invisible, then she would be even more startled but would still give the squeeze on her talking.)

She'll nod to Ava's question,

"I'm glad you're okay, but what's the news?"

---

Marrin joins Hammerdasher's discontent and mutters to Dan,

"This a the definition of a captive audience Dan."

She'll turn around to get Soren's attention and give him an extreme raised eyebrow she is seeking to convey,

'You didn't mention the chance of a tree kidnapping us'

Back to him.

When Hammerdasher asks about lunch Marrin adds,

"And the horses need to eat and drink. Dan's farts are somehow becoming more belligerent. Sorry (whomever is directly behind Dan and Marrin)."

Soren raises his hands in silent surrender in reply to the tree kidnapping quip.

"Whatever has them riled up must be bad for them to take this level of action," Soren says. "They usually take forever to decide what to do and make their plans."

Hammedasher overhears and mutters "Unless they made all their bleeding plans before we even got here."

QuietWalnut appears to finally understand what the discussion of lunch means.

"You would like to stop?" she asks, as a combination of question and statement. "Over here would be good."

She doubles back a little in the direction you just came from and then turns north. The terrain suddenly starts getting steep. You find your horses and ponies scrambling up the slope of a tree covered embankment. Just before it gets too steep for them, you come out on to a small plateau. QuietWalnut moves to the center and gets quite still, as her trunk-legs seem to connect with the soil below.

She waves her upper limbs towards the north.

"If you climb one of those trees there at the edge of the clearing and look north, you can see where we're headed."

At the north edge of the clearing, a pair of tall fir trees stand sentry above the shorter pines making up this part of the woods.

----------------------------------

Athletics Check for anyone looking to climb the tree for a view (DC 10 not to fall, DC 15 to get a preview of where you're going, DC 20 to get a clearer picture of the land you're headed towards, DC25 and you'll get to the top of the tree).

Jan will explain to Marrin and Ava about the lack of a lock on the chest, and show them her sketches of the glyphs, but make sure those get to Ethel to study and see what she can make of them.

Marrin looks at the symbols to see if they are familiar, before shrugging.

"Ethel's probably got an idea."

She agrees.

Once they've stopped she'll set about getting feed for the horses and mention to Quietwalnut,

"If there are any streams nearby, the horses could use a drink."

Then she thinks about their interactions so far.

"Take us to a stream next Quietwalnut. These animals need to drink from it."

Marrin looks skeptically at the trees before looking over to Ava and saying,

"If anyone can climb those trees, you can!"

D8 of Bardic to Ava (to use as she wishes in the next 10 minutes!).

((@Thor, how long a rest are we getting here? Going to make it to short rest?))

(Yes, you can manage a short rest here, with time for tree climbing, glyph reading, forest watching)