The group gets themselves together after a night of rest, then start out to the sawmill camp, interrupted by the accidental finding of the detached head of a Shevam lodged in the roots of a tree. The fear ridden head was left where it was found, as they continued across the dam to the sawmill.
The entered the mill, in good shape considering, the wheel had been raised, the mechanisms at rest. There was a puzzling lack of invading rodents or bugs and even the grease on the cogs and spindles seems to have been eaten by something.
As the group carry on investigating, finding rags and blood, detritus, climbing up first one floor, then towards the third, at this point they were attacked, whilst on the stairs, by owls, owls with razor like tongues that sought out flesh to bore into and extract the blood. Swift, silent, relentless, good fortune and armour protected the group, or most of them, José and Jalabu left, like Jushuur, without the use of one arm, gushing wounds needing patched up.
There were fine moments, Jushuur and Jalabu both managed to spit two of these vampiric menaces out of the air, indeed, Jalabu slapped another out of the air with the flying corpse flicked from his sword.
Patching themselves up, they found, on the top floor of the mill, the blood owl nests and a closed room, in which was a tidier, more recently occupied room, in which were two corpses of men brutally murdered, a pile of blankets, and a chest containing clothes, two daggers probably relatively recently placed there, but an older secreted pouch with two gold nuggets in it.
Going outside, the bodies from last night were gone, and tracks led to the graveyard, the graves recently returned
Turning resurrectionist, they exhumed a body, and cut its head off, only to find that plant tendrils grew out, dragging the head back to the body. Appalled, the group built pyres, exhumed all the bodies, and burned them. Well, apart from the time José went a little mad after communing with the overgrown hut and tried to stop them, wrestling others to the ground before he was stopped.
An examination of the remaining camp showed some documentation that might , concerning some kind of plot, a couple of tool sheds and a perfectly normal well.
That left the overgrown hut, covered in plants in a way unique in the place, José suggested the nature spirit that rumour had said was angry, and let’s face it, plant zombies are fairly strong circumstantial evidence of that, might lift the curse if they could agree to leave the wood to return to nature, abandoning the offing
The hut sent out a little girl, another of the plant motivated creatures, the deywafa. She spoke for the spirit, and the group agreed to make the case for the spirit to the owner.
They left to camp out the night to rest, before next time they plan return to the village and collecting mules and servants.
The Blood Owls get a better chance of a grievous wound to normal, but even so, this shows how deadly grievous wounds can be. And how slow natural healing is, and how rare magical healing is.