Smokey and the Badger

The session opened mid-crisis on the logging road outside Waymoot, with Gorlog and Wicket aboard the Greasy Spoon facing four of Silas's thugs — two flanking the wagon, two emerging from the treeline — while Silas himself lurked unseen in the forest. Julian Pendergast, the Gilded Ladle auditor who had just awarded the wagon a seal of adequacy, revealed himself as an unexpected ally when the thugs turned on the party, drawing his ornate silver greataxe — the Critic's Choice — and dispatching two thugs with lethal precision before the rest of the crew had even swung a meaningful blow. Silas made one cowardly stab at Wicket from the treeline, missed, and used a bonus action to disengage and retreat, disappearing into the woods. Gorlog grappled the final conscious thug, Wicket finished off another, and the surviving thug — having cried out fruitlessly for Silas and received only silence — attempted to flee before being tripped by Wicket and force-fed some of Gorlog's food. Harold the Kingsguard arrived with a dozen loggers just as the fight concluded, demanding an accounting of the 'treachery.'