We just participated in the strangest deal of my (admittedly young) life. We found a guy with a gem of power for sale. He wanted 100,000 gp or equivalent magic stuff. We dug deep into our pockets, but somehow didn't have enough (I imagine Errol's chef needed a new spice rack or something). So we "booked" the deal to Pavalar and Tera and her crew agreed to put up some fancy rods. So far so good. We go to make the trade, get the gem (which seemed genuine), and then noticed that the seller had left the stuff we gave him (100,000gp worth of magic rods!!) behind. Now, that's sloppy! Upon reflection, we decided that he'd done it on purpose (he'd been so careful and precise about everything else). This was pretty scary, so we zoomed to the Belar city (a sort of maze with some kind of force field protection), and met Tera there. She was happy with the gem of power, but none of us could figure out why our seller would leave his goodies behind. Tera said it seemed best that we have them, though (very nice!). The whole affair is a mystery, but I do have two conclusions: 1) our seller MEANT for Tera and the Belar to have this gem (whether for good or evil reasons), and 2) the seller and his patrons were not motivated by financial reasons (otherwise, why leave us the goodies?).

Then finally, after all the waiting around, we started into the big contest. First up was an archery contest. We were terrific, even with a great lump of a heavy crossbow that we'd had to buy (only bows or crossbows were eligible). Terrific, that is, except for Vaugner, who couldn't hit a barn door that day (strange how he's an amazing shot most of the time, and then sometimes chokes massively.). Luckily, we still had an ample lead over everyone else, and we won!

Next up was a contest were we balanced on a big log going downstream. I thought we'd be good at this one, since Vaugner and I are very good at balancing ourselves, and everyone else is pretty strong or agile. Vernon REALLY wanted to enlarge himself (does he KNOW that he weighs over 1000lbs when he's enlarged?) to be a fraction stronger but I talked him out of it (at best, he might have been able to hang on a little further, at worst we'd all fall over immediately when His Weightiness stepped on the log!). Either way. We all did pretty well, right until we all fell off. Not our best show, and certainly no victory.