The pixies thank you for everything, and flutter off to the west.

Mindartis moves to stand guard in a place where he can see people coming in and out, and also keep an eye on the remainder of the pixies and gnome children who were still down here.

Raven will wait, hoping their wizard companion can use his arts to identify or detect any magic, prior to her acting. 

Elwin tried to keep a low profile near Raven, not wanting to spoil her chances at striking if necessary. At her question regarding determining the elf's state, he shrugged. He wasn't much for intuiting that sort of thing, but he figured maybe his magical knowledge might be enough to spot any obvious signs. He turned to stare at the elf, trying to see if any such signs were present.

Elwin will try to use Arcana to detect any signs of enchantment, if allowed. Arcana Check: 4

After a while, the elf yawns, stretches, pulls one of the flowers out of his hair and absent-mindedly starts pulling petals off it. If he is enchanted, Elwin doesn't see any overt signs of it.

Underground, eventually, more gnome urchins enter the root chamber and try to push through the shield, with no success.  The group of gnome urchins grows to twenty-seven. Eventually, one by one, the gnomes, sprites and pixies give up trying to break through the shield and just sit looking at it with expressions of baffled frustration.

(So, does Quentin join Raven, stay with Mindartis, or other?)

Quote from Astalda >>

(So, does Quentin join Raven, stay with Mindartis, or other?)

 waiting on answer to above for deciding how long Raven waits before just acting.

Quentin will join Raven and upon hearing the situation says, “Well we can wait ten more minutes. I can’t condone just attacking a poor elf.” He then starts to cast Detect Magic

Quentin sees no sign of magic anywhere!

As Quentin approaches to do the spell, the elf says, "Hay, dude," and sits up.

“Hello. Slow day?” Quentin says with a smile as he approaches not detecting any magic 

The elf yawns. "Pretty tedious.  But it's my turn to do the pickup. Frankly, I'm about over this 'business arrangement,' free wine or no.  If you're looking for work, I'm afraid we don't do that sort of thing, but you are welcome to leave this ridiculous grind wage slaves and merchants behind and join us to live the way elves were naturally meant to."

“Oh.....care to elaborate?” Quentin asks curiously 

"Elves were meant to roam freely and take part in the joys of nature," the elf says. "Where did all this nonsense come from about slaving away for coins, staying in the same place, doing the same work each day, trading worthless bits of metal as if they are droplets of life itself?  Corellon is the essence of chaos! It's little wonder he has left the elves behind, as so many insist on rooting themselves in place like dwarves and humans and clods of earth. Some of us were meant to rise beyond these artificial prisons that modern elves have incarcerated themselves in, and experience our true essence."

He jumps up and stands on the wagon seat, gripping his fancy plumed hat. "Join us, brother--or not, as you please--for behold! I am High King Lassilar of the Court of Fools!" He makes an elaborate and theatrical bow. "For today, anyhow," he adds.  Tomorrow, perhaps I will be a baker or a baron.  Or a washerwoman or a blink dog.  Everything is in flux, my friend."

I am sorry and happy to report, Brother my Liege King, we may have disrupted this particular grind, in the course of liberating some oppressed workers Del says after Q leads the way I am happy to cover more than the days wages, if it will help ease the transition to a proper elf-life, if you tell us what you were supposed to do when this load was complete

"Oh my... would that I had a Silence spell, and could follow up with Sleep," thought Elwin, rolling his eyes as he overheard the elf's bard-like exhortations. He suppressed a wince as he realized he was being somewhat disparaging to Del's occupation with his response.

'High King' Lassilar sits again and says, "We bring the wagon here in the morning, wait while gnome kiddies spend all day loading us up, take these sacks down the river a mile or so at sunset, and a boat picks them up and trades us eight crates of good wine for them.  I can't imagine why. We've all peeked, even though we were told not to, and there's nothing but rolled-up wood shavings in there. But Hollis says not to look free wine in the mouth.  I'm just as well pleased if it has come to an end, as you say.  This has been going on for, I don't know, a few months now, and today is like my sixth turn at sitting on the wagon all day, and that's five times too many."

I guess that was the sort of wine you ought to have looked in the mouth, Majesty - the shavings are the roots of the Great Pixie Tree, those kiddies were enslaved and enchanted, and it is all in service of bringing back the Arch Witch. Del turns to his friends I do not think we have time to trace the rest of the chain - Sir Elwin will need to be back at his vigil. Maybe bring the High King and his cart full of shavings... looking at the elf What pulls it by the way?  ...to the restorers on the way back, to fill in the news to them. And maybe someone ought to join Lord Mindartis with the small ones. I would be happy to - if the information Lord Quentin gleaned about the enchantment holds, Dispel Magic might work as well and I could free a few more who could free more themselves

Lassilar looks horrified at the news. "Well, that tears it, I shall do this so-called job no longer," he says, jumping down from the wagon. "I'm not sure how they'll react when I tell them back at the camp.  Hollis would probably just throw a horse-apple at my head and call me a nincompoop, and that would be the end of it, but there's a new guy in camp that's been kinda-sorta calling the shots lately, and he seemed really interested in keeping in good with the boat people, and even in finding new ways to expand our business." He says the last word with an expression of complete disgust.  "As for the wagon, around sunset one of the camp pixies who isn't too hung over usually flies out and transforms into something that can pull it."

Del laughs Ha ha - Lemet Naica, or I'll eat Sister Raven's hat-that-used-to-be-his Del shows an image of the miscreant using Minor Illusion Another thread we cannot yet pull - unless you think we should? (this to the others; back to the King) can you describe where the camp is, Majesty, and where you meet the boat? 

"Yeees, that looks like him," Lassilar agrees.  "He seems to be a wizard of some sort. You know him?  We're all regretting that he turned up, and Hollis said he is starting to be sorry he let Lemmet take over. The guy has strange ideas about accumulating wealth. Nobody wants to bother challenging him and getting stuck being in charge, though. Of course, if you turned up and challenged him for the leadership, we'd be more or less obligated to help you with stuff."

He gives you a vague idea where the camp is, off to the northish-westish a mile or three, where the forest is thicker, beyond the area that was burned.  The dock is on the riverbank, a bit southeast of the camp. "At any rate, if any of you is any good at tracking, we've been running a wagon every day for months now, it shouldn't be hard to follow the tracks."

Mindartis notes the number of gnome urchins, and pixies, and sprites (oh my!) and tries to imagine the portable dungeon to see if they would even all fit in there. Deducing on his own that wouldn't be a great idea, he only hopes that the pixies return soon, preferable with an army of druids to help them... even though he doubts that's what's going to happen. He also starts thinking about where they're going next, seeing as there are two more trees on two different planes of existence. It didn't help that the more they did this, the more attention they were going to draw from these Hags and their Barelymen. The one good thing he could think of coming from this is that the Ring Leader was surely getting more and more frustrated at them. Maybe whoever they were would come to them on their own. Whoever they were... he'd be ready for them.