The party follow Brutrumukk's advice and are able to use the carved footholds and handholds to climb their way down and then just simply land on the shelf mushrooms and hop off.

Sticky mud squelches beneath their feet. Tangled mangroves grow out of pools of rippling water, half hidden by the thick fog, and purple mushrooms cling to rotting logs and stumps scattered throughout the marsh. Crickets that glow like fireflies chirp serenely before they're snatched out of the air by the tongues of hungry frogs.

In the distance, a giant crane lifts its head above the fog, and looks to the party. It gives a single squawk before taking flight and leaving the party alone.

After a moment of silence, the party hears something.

Coming from one direction are several voices joined in a marching song. The singing grows louder as six bipedal rabbits wearing clothing emerge from the fog. Two of them tug at the reins of a giant snail, and the others carry clubs and slings.



The leading bipedal rabbit, raises a hand to signal the others to stop singing, and they do. The rabbit turns her attention to the party and she speaks,

"G'day Ladies and Gents! I am Jebbek. This is a robbery. Surrender your memories of receiving the best gift you ever received, and we'll be on our way. If you resist, we'll beat you black and blue,"

Brutrumukk's simple reply was to let loose a terrifying roar.

Bringing up the rear, Gabriel had just set foot upon the ground and completely taken off guard by the tremendous roar of the bugbear. Fumbling with his weapon trying and failing to draw it in a menacing flourish like he wanted to making quite a fool of himself in the process.

Brutrumukk's roar is loud and impressive, the Bunny Brigands look wide eyed at him, and Jub lets out a cackle, bolstered by Brutrumukk's intimidating roar. At first the robbers seem to consider running away.

However...they looked at the rest of the party, who are quite frankly, not as scary as the goblins.

Jebbek grins "Don't falter now, men! Agdon Longscarf would be disappointed. Let's beat 'em up!"

With the men riled up, they prepare to charge.

Jebbek doesn't charge first. Instead she lets the others charge first.

Meanwhile, Bunny Brigand E seems to be distracted by the giant snail and he hits it over the head while insulting it, "Come on, you stupid lug! " The giant snail lets out an angry noise in response.

---

Well, this has been crap so far. Tsak's first adventure away from the circus had so far been nothing bit inner party bickering and now a mugging. Tsak was a circus hand, not a gods damn warrior. Biggest fight she had ever been in was removing kids or drunks from an attraction!

Pulling her Dagger from its sheath, she would point to the leader and cast Hex on the leader.

"G'day Ladies and Gents! I am Jebbek. This is a robbery. Surrender your memories of receiving the best gift you ever received, and we'll be on our way. If you resist, we'll beat you black and blue."

Maybe it was down to nerves. Maybe it was utter bizarreness of the request. Maybe he'd been spending too much time around Brutrumukk and had started to absorb some of the bugbear's bravado. Or maybe it was their supposed muggers were freaking rabbits. Either way, something about this whole situation must have struck Jub as funny because he suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh my gods!" he said in between bouts of laughter. "The ears... the noses... the little hoppy feet! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, give me a moment..." He had to take some time to recover, wiping away tears as he watched the robbers become a little bit twitchy after witnessing Brutrumukk give an impressive roar. Still, they didn't seem to be backing down.

"I guess we're doing this, then," Jub said once he'd regained his composure. He glanced at his companions. "How'd ya'll like your rabbit, by the way? Well done? Medium rare?" As he was speaking, he'd started to doing a odd gesture with his hands, causing a small mote of flame to form, which he proceeded to hurl at the brigand who was attempting to rally the snail.

"G'day Ladies and Gents! I am Jebbek. This is a robbery. Surrender your memories of receiving the best gift you ever received, and we'll be on our way. If you resist, we'll beat you black and blue,"

Zavakri's initial anger and surging rage was curtailed by Brutrumukk's roar and the Jub's intimidating presence. She briefly appraises her own companions with a sense of worry, before the ensuing combat brings her back into the now. She appraises the situations, before her eyes settle on Jebbek and she once again feels that surge of defiant rage.

The best gift she'd ever received? It was upon the ring finger of her left hand right this instant, and the memory was one she'd cherish forever. Nobody would ever take that memory from her.

She reaches within her cloak and produces the strange orb she used as an arcane focus, its surface aglow with mathematical scripture and displaying a multifaceted calculation spectrum. This arcane calculator, as it were, is her utmost tool in manipulating the world.

"As it turns out, The Balance agrees with me; there's too much of your ego in this world, and too little kindness. I'm going to try to stabilize that equation." She says seriously, holding the Orb aloft as a series of formulae glow into the air around her, her eyes once again appearing as the hands of a clock as they spin around and magical energy surges from within her...

Let X equal that ghastly creature's position...

She swung the orb forward, the calculations solving themselves in the air around her as her fingers dance on the surface of the strange implement; each solved equation flying forth towards Jebbek unerringly. Three orbs of arcane fury, characterized as mathematical solutions. She then cautiously steps back, eyes wary for further danger. That Snail was scary.

X=5; Three Missiles. 15 Force Damage total to Jebbek

Jebbek suddenly gains a strange aura after Tsak casts her spell. It is clear to Tsak that the spell was successful, and the leader is now hexed.

Then Jub lobs a Fire Bolt at the the Brigand who was browbeating the snail. The fire catches his cottontail and sets it alight, causing him to jump upwards with scream and with both hands on his tail. It takes a while, but he does manage to put out the fire, but it's clear that the bolt did a lot of damage to him judging from burnt state of his tail.

Then Zavakri sends three darts at Jebbek, each giving the leader a powerful wallop. The rabbit is now standing there with a black eye and bruises under her fur.

Three of the Brigands who were ready to charge in see this onslaught of magical attacks and they look to each other.

"This is looking bad, right?"
"Oh yeah! This is looking bad!"
"Let's get outta here then!"

With that cry, the three Brigands start running away. One of them stops to drag Jebbek with him since she is already beaten within an inch of her life.

The magical barage that both Jub and Zavakri caught the strange rabbit folk of guard. Aurora hadn't expected it either. It appeared that three were already fleeing, with only one stopping to collect their leader. Aurora knocks an arrow to her short bow aiming for the one in front of the snail. He goal wasn't necessarily to harm but to encourage them to flee.

Both rabbits who were by the snail, were startled by the arrow from Aurora, and the other rabbit tries to get the snail to leave with the rest of the Brigands.

"Come. ON! Let's go you stupid---!"

The snail refuses to budge and simply lets out a louder angry noise at the brigands.

The brigand recoils before he sneers "Fine! Stay if you wanna be escargot so damn much, you stupid thing!"

He then runs away as well.

Seeing the Brigands in full retreat, Brutrumukk began to laugh cruelly at their cowardice. As the rabbits ran, the bugbear began to stalk forward. As he advanced, Brutrumukk drew a Javelin and sang a murderous mockery of the ballad the Brigands had been singing when they arrived.



When he reached the part of the song that mentioned his javelin, Brutrumukk hurled it towards the ankle of the rabbit that was trying to drag Jebbek away. As much as the bugbear feared Skiggaret and the madness he brought, Brutrumukk had always been secretly grateful for the lessons he learned when under Skiggaret's sway. Helping the wounded when an enemy you had no hope of defeating was chasing you never ends well for the fools who stopped to do so. And a certain benevolent bunny was about to learn that the hard way.

The bunny brigand lets out a pained cry as the javelin strikes true. But he is still up and Jebbek is now helping him stay standing.

The Giant Snail meanwhile remains uncooperative and just stays where it is for now.

As he stood at a distance from the fleeing brigands, the half-elf tapped his index finger on the basketed hilt of the rapier hung at his side watching the would-be memory thieves run off.

"Stand down all of you, let them go." after a moment of pause between battle, Gabriel spoke loudly to everyone "Let them run, they meant no real harm anyways. I can tell, I know when someone wants to kill you or not." he got a distant look as he watched Jebbek flee. "They'll know not to bother us again anyhow."

Bunny Brigand E was looking at the party with wide eyes before Jebbek calls to him, "Hey! Help me carry Harry! Come on!"

The rabbit leaps over to the both of them and he helps Jebbek carry Harry this time, and the three remaining Bunny Bandits disappear into the swamp, obscured by the mists.

The party is now alone...with a lone giant snail.

The giant snail realizes that its free and with a huff, it starts to leave as well.

"You should jus' run!" Brutrumukk called out to the last unwounded Bandit that had yet to flee as the bugbear drew his morningstar. "Look at what 'appened to 'Arry when 'e tried to 'elp." Despite his words of discouragement though, the last Bandit went to help anyway. "Fine. 'Ave it yer way." Brutrumukk said as he prepared a second Javelin in his off hand. "Three carcasses o' rabbit meat are much better than two anyway." With that said, Brutrumukk followed the fleeing Bandits into the mist.

"Well, that depends on your definition of 'doing harm'," Jub said in response to Gabriel. "You don't have to severely wound someone to 'do harm'. Sometimes, taking that which he holds dear is all that is required, especially when that person already has so little." He glanced over at the fleeing bandits. "And these would-be muggers were particularly nasty in that regard. Imagine taking someone's memories! I certainly wouldn't shed any tears for them." However, he showed no sign of wanting to pursue the brigands, merely watching as Brutrumukk attempted to give chase. After a moment, he looked back at Gabriel. "I doubt he's going to back down. If you wish, I may know a way to incapacitate him so he doesn't run off and get himself into trouble. Perfectly harmless, though he probably won't thank either of us for it."

All he did was sigh in exasperation as Brutrumukk chased after the brigands into the mist "I'm not so sure it will make things much simpler." Gabriel said in a rather defeated tone "Not to sound a bit blunt Jub but he seems to enjoy this sort of thing." he waved to the area where they had fought and the aftermath "I'll leave it up to you to decide how to handle our bugbear friend because you and he are close, he might listen to you who knows!" he added with a shrug "Do whatever you think is best Jub."

---

Knowing it was a risk, Tsak flew up and around Brut, meeting him at chest hight and puts her hands out. "whoa there big guy, they're gone, you won! There is no need to give chase! The rabbis learned their lesson, lets move on!"

Before Jub could respond to Gabriel, Tsak had seemingly taken it upon herself to try and stop the bugbear. The goblin's concern about possibly losing Brutrumukk in the fog turned to actual panic as he feared he might strike out at the fairy for getting in his way. Hoping to mitigate any potential damage, Jub produced his magic wand from his coat pocket and, approaching the pair, began muttering to himself and making a gesture with his free hand in attempt to cast an enchantment on the riled barbarian.

Rather than causing the bugbear to collapse into an incapacitating fit of laughter, Jub's spell served only to convince Brutrumukk that Tsak's attempt at getting him to stand down was the funniest thing he'd heard in days. "Like 'Ells I'm movin' on!" Brutrumukk laughed as he continued his pursuit, barging past Tsak if she refused to get out of the way. "I ain't lettin' me lunch get away without a chase!"