Anakis looks at Fluin on the ground, sadness in her eyes, "Why should we play nice with these Bright Spirit Kin? Look what they did." She absently pats her shirt, at which point Custard's head pops out and she gives the mouse a morsel of food before it disappears. She kneels down next to Fluin "Is there any way we can bring him back?" She shakes body to see if he wakes up. As she does this, she sees if she can find any gold or little, useful items and tries to pocket them (Sleight of Hand: 21).

Apart from his backpack, still buckled over his shoulders, Fluin has several items attached to his belt: a tinderbox, a mess kit, and a belt pouch. The pouch jingles faintly with the sound of coin as he shakes, and feels like it holds about a fifth of a pound in heft. Fluin doesn't stir or regain consciousness, and everyone notices Anakis trying to steal from him.

"Trying to smooth things over does seem like a good idea, at the very least, so this doesn't happen again," Aluzira says, smiling when she sees custards head pop out.  "No, I've used up all my healing magic for now, but he is stable; he just needs some rest."  Then seeing Anakis looking through Fluin's stuff raises an eyebrow.  "Anakis... don't you think he'll need that stuff later?"

"What? I'm not stealing, I just need it more than he does right now," Anakis shrugs innocently and puts on an innocent face, "He can have it back later, promise."

"Anakis, you should ask him when he wakes up if you can use it. Otherwise, it is technically stealing.  And besides that, don't you already have a tinderbox?"  Aluzira asks, with genuine curiosity.

"Um... yes," Anakis says quietly, then blurts out, "But you can never have too many things!"

Aluzira, unsure of what to do or say at this point, and rather certain that morals will soon come into play, looks to the others with a look that says, "Help..." 

"I find that having too many things can be bad for your mental health.  You lose a thing and then your brain goes fuzzy for a while.  Or some things can rattle around and get ya caught when yer try'na be sneaky..."  Torrent looks at the kid and smiles.  Something about having her around is very calming.

(DM questions:  Would Torrent know where the Kin are located and where Fallshade is from their current position?)

Tarek shrugs at Anakis stealing off of Fluin's person. "We're all in the same group, so it isn't technically stealing," he remarks, before changing the subject. "Does everyone have enough water? If not, I'll gladly go get some more."

Anakis decides to leave Fluin's things, unsure of whether to pocket anything, especially the gold, after all the conversation. She giggles at Torrent's remark about things rattling when being sneaky, "I'm toooo sneaky for that." She then looks into her water skin at Tarek's remark and pouts, "I'll need some more water. I can help you find some though while the others figure out where we go next."

(DM question - can Anakis take the crystal door knob off the end of the woman's spear? It's shiny and, to Anakis, she might think it will be worth something if she tries to sell it)

"While you guys look for water, should I go look for the weapons we dropped during the fight?" Aluzira asks, looking off into the woods.

"Don' stray far.  This neck'a the woods ain't safe, as we know.  In the interest of makin' a decision, let's go ta Fallshade.  We kin get in contact with others there.  We're outta water anyway, so it'd be in our best interest to restock now."

Torrent, from what you know of the Bright Spirit Kin, they don't stay in any one place for long and are careful to keep their seasonal villages well hidden. Of Fallshade, you have merely heard that it lies in the bog at some distance to the west of the city. You are now southwest of the city but not very far from it. From what you have heard, Fallshade is farther out west. The cold air is still moving lightly from that direction.

Yes Anakis, it's easy to untie the crystal knob from the haft of the spear. Take Inspiration for pocketing this new find of yours.

It'll take about an hour of searching through the wood nearby for you to retrieve your dropped weapons and Torrent's backpack. How long are Tarek and Anakis going to spend looking for clean water, assuming they don't find any right away? Only the afternoon remains before nightfall.

Ulben would look for the stuff he used to filter the water before.

Considering that Ulben's discovery of clonna at the other campsite was accidental, a simple attempt to visually identify the same substance is not possible because he doesn't know what it looks like. The existence of clonna might be known to him through some elvish herb lore that may have been passed down through his family, but any description of its appearance was lost. Can you describe something that Ulben might do to ascertain the presence and correctly use the clonna that's potentially in the area?

He would be physically walking around looking at different fungus and plants trying to find one that looks the same.

As Anakis helps Tarek search for water, she points over at Ulben crawling around looking for something, "He's a little funny, don't ya think? Why do you think he came out here if he's such a scaredy cat? Do you think we should keep going, or should we go back to the city to rest up and sell some stuff?" She looks at her new shiny crystal door knob in her pack as she says this last part, "Why do you think the swamp people are so angry about us trying to protect the swamp from all the toads?" She continues to throw questions at Tarek as they search for water.

Tarek will probably search until about an hour before sunset, just so they can make it back to the party before night falls.

A bit flustered as Anakis continues to ask questions to him, Tarek just shrugs at her first question. "I don't know, you should just ask him. But kid, why are you here?" To her second question, he again shrugs and says, "I'm not sure, we should ask the rest of the group."

As Anakis pauses to look at her door knob, Tarek takes off his amulet and fumbles with it. When Anakis speaks up again, Tarek just places a hand gently on her shoulder and listens intently. He takes a moment to contemplate his answer, before saying, "Many people worship Pelor in many different ways. Some focus on his better qualities, such as the light or radiance, while others, such as more extreme sects or even cults, focus on his wrath, heat, and destructive nature.  As a modern worshipper and shrine keeper, I tend to keep a balance between both sides of Pelor. Older variants of worship might tend more towards his virtues than his vices. Thus, the Bright Spirit Kin, as they call themselves, could give vows of non-violence, especially towards creatures and the defenseless. But that is only my guess. Like I said before, even I do not fully understand the ways of Pelor. Does that help you understand?"

"I'm here for the other kids in Steepgulch. No one looks after them," Anakis looks off into the distance as she thinks about them. She listens to Tarek talk about Pelor, then replies "Pelor sounds confusing. I think I'll stick with Mask. He's pretty cool. He gave me my powers," she giggles, and then races off to the rest of the group.

Ulben, in my last post I said that attempting to visually identify the plant wasn't going to work, but you seem to have a different idea. My reason for this is that I had imagined that Ulben used the various sieves, strainers, sifters, and colanders in his cook set to set up multiple filters, each one with a different plant or combination of plants in it, without keeping track of which plant was in which filter. Then when Ulben hit upon the right combination and succeeded in clarifying the water, my take was that the success didn't confer any specific knowledge of which plant was the one that did the trick. The success was limited to setting up a working filter in that situation. I suppose, though, that Ulben could attempt to repeat his experiment in this new situation.

On the other hand, it seems that you're imagining that Ulben now has a mental picture of the clonna that he can compare to plants in the area to see if he can find one that matches, which would mean that he was a little more careful in his experimentation than I had originally thought. If that's the case, then I would ask you how far you go in search of this plant.

Anakis, at the end of your post you said you rejoined the rest of the group. Does that mean you're not going with Tarek to look for water?