Valar taps his foot for on the swamp grounds, "You think they would want to be buried here or would they  want to be wherever their family would want bury them? Also should we waste our time digging holes while littles ones are off somewhere with something dangerous?"

Henreid's nature check on the panthers yields very little other than they were reanimated. His check in the bushes only yields remains the panthers were devouring. There are only panther tracks and drag marks visible.

"While I agree that we need to hurry, as well as that the guards should be buried according to their family's wishes, I wish to say that I cannot let their bodies sit out in the open to be consumed by wild animals. Perhaps we should at least wrap them in shrouds, bury them in a shallow grave, and then bring them back to the town when we have time."

"You have shrouds?"

Talos thinks for a second 

"I don't think a good old fashioned funeral Pryor would attract anymore attention than that fire."🦉

"I agree with Valar, if this is just a glimpse of what we're up against, we need to track those children as fast as possible." 

Henreid communicates with Lycosa in the simple clicking and gesturing they understand from each other. She leads him to the trail of grease she spotted earlier.

"Lycosa picked up the grease trail again. The longer we take, the less of a chance the children have."

"What you say is true but even if they were not well trained a warrior of any kind deserve a proper funeral. If we were with my people I would find a place to set up a cairn for them but a pyre could serve just as well." Malbor says as he looks to them over his shoulder.

saralyssa finishes looking through the corpses's pockets and the camp supplies, and nods her agreement.  "We better get after those kids, or who knows what might be done to them." She glances back at the bodies.  "There is nothing we can do for the dead, other than to finish what they could not."

"I'm keeping watch so by all means start. Was this the party going after the other child?"

If Talos sees a breast plate he can use he will take it 

"I suppose we should gather any coin and divide it if no one objects, Sal were you going to see if there is any magic about?"

ooc: I think we earned it

If the group is staying put for ten minutes Saralyssa will cast Detect Magic as  ritual.  She has already looked through the equipment and other items around the camp by this point.

"Are you sure we should take time for that?" Saralyssa asks.  "I can cast my detect magic spell, but that will take ten minutes..."

Henreid clicks to Lycosa who starts digging a row of graves. As a burrowing spider, she makes short work of digging out shallow graves for the deceased. 

"The bodies will last longer if she wraps them in web," Henreid states matter-of-factly as he struggles to drag a body toward the first grave.

Requillary joins the two in laying the dead to rest. 

"May their souls find peace," he says after finishing, before casting Prestidigitation on himself and Henreid to rid themselves of grime and dirt.

"Now, let us continue searching for the missing children."

Talos says to Henreid as he lays his hand on his shoulder

"Hold, We really didn't decide what to do but since your spider can dig the graves and make shrouds wait till Saralyssa finishes her spell.

 then we can finish burying them. I insist"

Henreid nods at Talos. After Lycosa finishes the last of the graves, she begins to wrap the bodies in spider silk. Gently, she places them into each open grave then goes to Henreid while Saralyssa continues her spell.

Meanwhile, Henreid had wandered over to the grease trail while Lycosa was digging. He's muttering to himself again as he rubs the grease between his fingers again, "Tastes like...nothing I know. Doesn't smell like grease. Doesn't burn like grease. Looks and feels like grease, but it's not grease..."

Henreid makes a mental note to quiz Saralyssa when she completes her spell. 

Saralyssa finds no magical traces but those on her companions. The party buries the dead and only find charred remains of their equipment.

Investigation checks for searching the charred remains of their equipment.

It takes the better part of two hours to do this and the sun has set leaving the eerie swamp forest completely black. Lycosa shows Henreid the trail but again the trail is faintly disappearing into the soft watery ground.

Perception checks pls.

Perception: 13

Perception 21

Perception: 17

Valar Perception: 18

Saralyssa investigation for equipment... 22

Hoot perception:  7

Saralyssa perception:  5

OOC: is it Hoot or Striker?

Saralyssa manages to find a chard sack of silver and cooper on one of the corpses that's salvageable.

Malbor and Talos

 The swamp is now shrouded in darkness, with no light source even those with dark vision are limited to shades of grey within range.