The heroes set out again with the new day, which started out much less bleakly in terms of weather, at least, without so much mist as the day before. It was still a very dank and cold marsh they were traversing, though. The first half of the day went smoothly, all things considered; they encountered some old stone ruins jutting out of the watercourse they were following and opted to find another route instead of trying to navigate the space between the wreckage. Erinyr navigated them around with great success, drawing on a past trade voyage through the Marsh to identify a promising route.
The waters Erinyr had them poling along through were really quite remarkable uninhabited, free of Marsh life and unlife. But after a few hours the water proved to not be free of danger, when, past a certain point, the current seemed to reverse, dragging them forward with gradually increasing speed toward some sort of drop. Erinyr tried to get the boat over to the shore so they could disembark, but the current rapidly grew too fast, and they all had to leap from the boat. All of our heroes and Shamed By Death did make it, but now they were without a boat, as they watched their boat go over the edge into some vast gaping hole of nothingness.
Obby tried to find some reeds to make a new boat with, but it seemed the reeds in the surrounding area had all been cut! The rest of the group quickly discovered the same thing, when a few zombies stumbled upon them, one dropping a basket full of reeds into the water where it was quickly swept away off the precipice. Barangian and Shamed By Death made quick work of the zombies, but the group was without a boat, and even Barangian’s Keko spirit was too frightened by the nearby hole to search for more reeds.
The group decided to try to cover ground by foot, heading in the direction of their destination but looking for reeds. They were frustrated all day when it came to reads, but at least they were not attacked. They did at one point pass very close to a depression in the ground full of rotting, but seemingly fully dead, corpses. Eventually they set up camp when the dark of night came, but soon discovered that they had set up camp in the midst of three gorps (Chaos ooze monsters) when Obby’s pants started to be absorbed into one of them. Fortunately for him, he reacted quickly and destroyed the gorp with the power of the Death Rune and was able to warn the others and find and clear out the others.
They made it through their second night in the Upland Marsh without further interruption, although in the light of morning they found themselves before a field of strange flowers they did not remember seeing the night before. Even Erinyr had never seen them before, but Erinyr did recognize from stories they had been told by the people from whom they learned their herblore that these were Chaos-tainted flowers, subtly or grossly wrong or strange. They gathered a few of the flowers to take with them in the hopes of eventually selling them, keeping the truth of what the flowers were to themselves for fear that the others might not take kindly to their trying to trade in Chaos.
By the afternoon, the group had managed to find a source of reeds, and Obby was able to hastily fashion a new boat for them. As they boated along, Lucky spotted a harpy as it saw them and turned suddenly to fly away. His summoned law hawk, Lincoln, was able to identify the harpy as a Chaos creature and discover that it was going to warn somebody. Fortunately, Barangian was able to strike the bird-like creature in the wing so that the boat could catch up and Obby could finish it off. Shamed By Death speculated that perhaps his zombies had recruited some harpies to scout for them.
The group continued on, quite close now. Indeed, they arrived at a dense grove of wetland trees precisely when a group of four dragonewt zombies and a harpy were emerging from within it. Together they slew the zombies, but the harpy retreated back into the trees after failing to throw some shit at a teleporting Barangian. They were able to identify an entrance into an earthen building nested within the trees, which Shamed By Death said had not been here the last time he’d entered the Marsh and confronted his zombies.
Barangian tried to start a fire in the entranceway with his spirits to trap the remaining 18 dragonewt zombies inside, but even his Bon Fire spirit could not ignite in the humidity of the lair. Erinyr was, however, able to use the plentiful water in air and trees and ground to modestly flood the building, which drew one zombie to the entrance to investigate. Barangian shocked it with his lightning to soften it up and Erinyr slew it with their spear. The spear came away holding the dragonewt’s heart, glowing subtly with the magic of Unlife. Barangian decided to keep sending his lightning into the water, hoping it would be conducted to weaken the remaining inhabitants further.