Session 14, 'Return to Sender,' opened with Ledger's voiceover (read at the table; inserted afterward from the DM's text) closing out Session 13: the mill crew talked into surrender by a kobold with a pot lid and a meat tenderizer, Vaela freeing every animal in the paddock and finding the warm egg — 'she said she's gonna be its mother; I hauled it out for her' — and then setting the pen on fire, quietly and on purpose. The count: ten river men tied, one lady chained with no key, one foreman who won't say a name, one soldier loose, one egg, one growing fire next to a building full of barrels nobody can identify, and two shacks up the path whose men slept through the surrender but not the fire.

Vaela, in the warehouse doorway, demanded of Kreel 'where is he?' Kreel insisted he is not who she is looking for and that he handles the warehouse, not the animals. He said about twenty of his men were forming a fire brigade, because fire is 'a class four emergency around here,' and begged the party to let them put it out. He kept glancing at the barrels. Asked about them, he called the liquid 'brine' — first saying he didn't know what it was used for, then that it is 'very flammable, is what I'm told,' on the manifest and not used at the mill, and that most of it gets shipped out while the animal handlers use some. Early on, Skrit filled his pot from an open barrel and threw it at the paddock fire, which produced only a plop, and then poured a trail of it toward Kreel as a threat.

Gorlog took command of the fire brigade with a rowers' heave-ho and an uncanny knack for running a bucket line; the fire was contained to the paddock, which is heavily damaged but still standing. When the bunkhouse men finished, Gorlog tried to persuade them to surrender (a natural 20 with advantage): three stepped forward, and the rest — roughly seventeen — dropped their buckets and fled from the fire-haired woman. Vaela spent a sorcery point to Misty Step after them, threatened a Fireball (she cast neither Fireball nor Command) and shouted for the animal handler; nobody answered, and the animal handlers had fled with the rest.

Kreel told the party the animals all belong to Old Man Vance, back in Splinter's Bend, who visits every moon or two ('a lot less often these days'); Kreel reports to him, has never seen him sell an animal, and described the collection as like a zoo that charges nobody. The egg, he said, was being kept safe and warm. When the party described the plesiosaur and the whistles, Kreel's head drooped; he knew training whistles exist but said 'they ain't supposed to be doing that' and called it 'a lazy man's path' — the whistle effect being a side effect of 'the sedative they put in the…' — and Skrit's Insight read him as truthful. He blamed the cords on the birds' beaks and necks on a worker named Larry, who 'can't tie a dang knot to save his life,' and said the bear was penned because she cuts herself up whenever she gets out. Skrit laid out the party's case — a raft crew that abducted a city guard after using a plesiosaur to attack a road — and the party floated taking Kreel back to Splinter's Bend to confront Vance, but did not act on it.

To test whether the brine would explode, Sanji carried the opened barrel out to the burned paddock area and Vaela hit it with Firebolt. It turned into a barely visible, shimmery mist that spread across the compound almost at once. Everyone rolled Constitution: Gorlog a natural 20 (24), Sanji 16, the others 5 and 9. The whole party was poisoned, and Skrit and Wickett were also incapacitated, as were many of the tied crew; the DM later ruled Gorlog was not poisoned at all, because the residue of his blight-kissed truffle oil makes him immune (and the oil turned out to be the antidote). Sanji dragged the foaming Skrit to the dock and Vaela pulled Wickett out; on the breezy dock Sanji splashed water on both, and each snapped out of it with a 19 on a Constitution check with advantage. Kreel and Sela were not affected; Kreel later said the brine is 'like a medicine… it's not for people, it helps keep the animals calm,' and the DM put their resistance down to sheer exposure.

Skrit then washed his pot in the river, went back, and poured the water into the burning barrel. It flared like a grease fire into a mushroom cloud; Skrit made a Dexterity save of 22 and, with the fire resistance from his cloak, took just 1 damage. The rest of the barrel aerosolized into a fog too thick to see through, covering the warehouse and grounds. Skrit passed his save (14) but was poisoned again; everyone else rolled at disadvantage and failed, and the DM later ruled the condition paralyzed and poisoned (paralyzed creatures stay aware). Only Gorlog, Kreel and Sela were unaffected. 'Great,' Kreel said, 'this will take a while.' Vaela's Detect Magic showed solid white magic in every direction within the fog.

On Kreel's suggestion, Gorlog used his blight-kissed truffle oil — the DM set the supply at about 24 doses, applied to skin — to revive the party one by one, entirely blind. He revived Wickett first (three applications), and Wickett held onto his shirt tail and guided him with 'fire, fur, feathers.' He groped a tied prisoner by mistake ('you don't seem like one of mine'), grabbed Sanji's tail on a natural 1, and revived her after running his hand up her side; once awake she punched him for 10 damage (14 against AC 13). He got his fingers in Vaela's mouth while finding her ('thank you, but your fingers do not go inside me'), revived her with three more applications, and she vomited on waking; then he found Skrit by his scaly head and revived him with one. Gorlog refused to go looking for the rescued guard and handed Wickett the bottle; Wickett picked out the guard as the one person neither tied nor manacled, rubbed oil into his hands (a 2, then an 18) and brought him round — he had heard everything. That made thirteen doses. Then they remembered Ledger, paralyzed while pulling the egg crate; being giant, he took four more, leaving about seven.

The party debated burning the warehouse and decided against it. Sanji suggested telling the guards where the prisoners are, and Vaela offered to Fireball the place from a distance; instead they simply walked out — 'we're just going to leave them here' — leaving Kreel, Sela and the tied crew inside the fog, with the guard, Ledger and the egg crate in tow, heading up the path toward the wagon. The fog was showing only the faintest signs of thinning. The session ended as they reached the edge of the mist ('you're not out of it yet'), with no closing voiceover.