We are traveling through the annoying province where we are asked to pay "protection money" to assure our safety. Various people in the party -- all of us, really -- object to that sort of thing on principle. So when we were asked for the money, this time we refused.

They let us through anyway, based on our visible prowess and (apparently) on the basis of our Belar-trained horses. What we didn't realize is that protection extends to not only the random humans, but also to certain dangerous beasts.

There was a village full of people, almost a fair. We couldn't approach without paying for protection, so we bypassed it, therefore not learning that they were engaged in an autumn ritual to call great monsters to replenish their farmland.

And, of course, we being who we are, we promptly stumbled on one of the monsters and had to fight it.

It was fairly dangerous -- I was low on health and feeling like I was in danger, but between Malif's maximised fireballs and my guisarme, we managed to take it down. We actually ended up with some decent treasure, so all was not lost. Thank the gods that it wasn't more dangerous, though, or we could have been in much more serious trouble.

All of which we could have avoided by simply paying the gold and asking a couple of questions.