Session 11 opened with the party leveling up to 5th level, with Vaela notably gaining access to Fireball. Ledger delivered the cold-open narration from the wagon, tallying the night's arithmetic: five stalls burned, one dead raider under canvas, four in irons, one missing guardsman (Corporal Tam Brannick), a whistle not where the law believed it to be, and a third raft that went upriver in the dark carrying something — or someone — it didn't arrive with. When Captain Stout arrived to take stock, Wickett returned the stolen evidence from Toby's pockets, claiming it as everything recovered — save the whistle, which he kept concealed. Stout, believing the whistle lost or headed upriver, accepted this. Skrit watched Wickett's every move with visible intensity but said nothing to Stout.

The prisoners were questioned on the riverbank. Under intimidation from Sanji and an accidental burning from Vaela (whose natural heat scalded the middle prisoner while she shook him), the raiders revealed they were dock workers at the mill upriver — loading and unloading crates they are never allowed to look inside — who had been drafted into escorting the dead man downriver. One prisoner, looking at the faceless body, identified him: Tobias Grimm, the animal handler at the mill — and Vaela's insight connected Grimm to the figure in the bushes across the river who hurt Pickles during the blockade fight. The middle prisoner, shaken (and unwittingly burned) by Vaela, named Kreel as the foreman of the mill who gives all the orders, and the prisoners confirmed that the third raft was the one Kreel followed back upriver. Stout offered the party use of the captured raft and a river-crossing raft if they would go upriver to retrieve Corporal Brannick, advising that 20 men work at the mill for pay, and one works for fear — 'mind that one.' Wickett apologized for implying Brannick might be a traitor, and the guards visibly relaxed.

Back at the inn, Skrit demanded the whistle from Wickett once they were alone — 'It's Wickett's turn to trust Skrit' — and immediately beat it flat with his meat tenderizer, bending it beyond any repair. He carried the flattened whistle back to the riverbank, where Vaela asked him for it and melted it into oblivion on the gravel in front of Pickles — deliberately not over the water — so the plesiosaur could watch her chains cease to exist. On the way out of the inn, Benjamin the desk clerk presented an itemized invoice (window egress fee, emotional distress to the desk staff, smoke-stained linens), which Wickett settled with two gold on the Fire Marshal's behalf, and Thaddeus the bartender quietly tipped off Wickett that two cloaked men had watched the market square from the window table at dusk the night before, ordering small beers they never touched and leaving no tip; Wickett searched near the table and found an empty vial bearing the tally-mark brand. Meanwhile, Gorlog was presented with a hastily sewn purple sash naming him Fire Warden — a title the table promptly settled as 'Fire Marshal' — of Thornwall Fords, gave another rousing speech to scattered chants of 'Gorlog for office,' and never took the sash off again. A woman named Mother Halda — the Speak with Animals caster the party had been hunting for while shopping in an earlier session — appeared at the wagon, was won over by Gorlog's Eggs Benjamin, and cast the spell to translate a conversation with Pickles.

Pickles confirmed the Starwater River is her home and communicated that she had been deliberately avoiding the mill upriver because that is where the ropes are. She conveyed that other animals at the mill were in similar circumstances to her own, and that when she is in that part of the river, she cannot think clearly. She also communicated, with some satisfaction, that Tobias Grimm — the animal handler — had been tasty. When Vaela promised Pickles that the party was going to destroy the ropes and free the animals, Halda relayed the answer: Pickles is in — she can pull the raft, forever. The session closed with the party loading onto two rafts — the wagon on one, Gorlog and Ledger on the other — after pointedly refusing to rope or harness Pickles ('we are not her keepers or her jailers'); Pickles grabbed each raft's dangling tow rope in her mouth of her own accord and began pulling them upriver in the late morning. Ledger delivered the closing narration — two rafts, a wagon, a badger, and a theory, heading up the same dark water all their trouble came down — and every time he'd done the arithmetic on this outfit, it was the other fellows who came up short. Next episode: everything's upstream.