We began with the party stumbling upon an ambush at a ford in the river, where some frogmen were just finishing off another group of adventurers. Upon defeating/driving away the frogmen, a letter was found on one of the adventurers' corpses. Although the details in the letter were scarce, a woman named Purple Butterfly asked her older brother to return to the town of Guan Yi, and to bring help. The party, realizing the corpse was probably Purple Butterfly's brother, deciding to fulfill the summons themselves. Upon arriving in Guan Yi, they discovered that someone had been kidnapping townsfolk to work in the old salt mine two days outside of town.
The journey to the salt mines was fraught with challenges; the party had to find a way around an ogre-enforced toll bridge, escape an ambush by Ho'ze on a narrow, sheer cliff, and finally defeat some voracious little lizards who rushed into camp from the woods at dawn. Once inside the mine, the characters were almost immediately challenged by a large group of Zain Kin, an evil race of Monkeys, led by a Zain Kin named Gan Yu, and supported by Ho'ze. After a hard fight against a multitudinous enemy, the characters found in the overseer's office a book on fungus along with a ledger of names, cities, and amounts in it. It seems the Zain Kin were harvesting the mushrooms with psychotropic properties for sale in towns throughout the region. The prisoners were found soon after the taxing battle, but two still labored in the fungus farm below. Descending into the farm chamber, both the prisoners and guards expected below were not to be found. Further exploration revealed the river chamber that is the source of the mine's flooding, and a second large "fungus farm" area. This second fungus cave was inhabited by sentient fungus men and some fungus-slime creatures that were apparently feeding on the corpses of the missing people. Fighting their way through, the party was able to rescue the surviving prisoner as he lay at death's door. After escorting the all prisoners safely home and collecting the small reward the villagers were able to put together, the party decided to return to Jiji before heading northeast to Rim of the Bowl, on the southern shore of Circle Lake.
In Jiji, they were able to discover the whereabouts of the individual whose name appeared in the ledger for the town. Huang Ti, a man with fire scars on his right brow and temple, and missing his right eyebrow, was known to hold court at the disreputable bar The Cracked Pipe. Accompanying Huang Ti were two human ruffians, Po Wen and Ping Hu, and a Jiu warrior named Qiu. Qingda and Bai Ren were able to catch enough of their conversation to discover Huang Ti's men are running low on mushrooms, and were expecting a delivery that night, "at the bridge." However, there are several bridges across the Green River as it knifes its way through Jiji, and it wasn't clear which bridge. Bingwen Zian, taking matters into his own hands, negotiated a deal to purchase some of the illicit mushrooms from Po Wen.
It looked like the deal was done, and the two parties would go their separate ways, until Zian realized there were yams at the bottom of the sack of mushrooms and instigated a fight. The party was able to defeat the crooks without too much of a struggle, and held them until the authorities could be summoned. After listening to the two sides bicker and make accusations, the local captain of the guard decided to bring everyone in for further questioning. We'll resume next time with everyone imprisoned.
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