In Which Bad Decisions Are Made Like Clockwork

Last week, the party continued their trek into the swamps of Ssect. Along their way, they were ambushed by unspeakably ugly swamp hags that wielded powerful magic. However, after some experimentation, the party determined that swamp hags have difficulty using magic while being knocked flying into the water. They also discovered that swamp hags hoard shiny things that they are willing to share if the alternative is a painful death.

Emboldened by their profitable encounter, the party pressed on. As they approached the resting site of the starmetal, they cautiously sent out scouts to stealthily determine if anything else had found it first. They found that the starmetal had indeed been discovered by orcs, who had set up a camp surrounding it. The question was - how would the party go about gaining access to the starmetal?

The answer, naturally, was a hastily concocted and slightly deranged plan courtesy of the ill-chosen scout, Clockwork. It involved cleverly poisoning himself with hallucinogenic muchrooms before walking up to some orcs on guard duty and directly asking them what they were doing. Then, when that somehow failed to work, possibly but not necessarily due to the complete absence of any common language to converse with, he fled for his life. For some reason the party decided that he would be an excellent choice to go scout the orcs again. Naturally, he behaved much better the second time. Until he decided to poison the orcs using the mushrooms. This actually worked surprisingly well, and while the guard orcs were distracted, the rest of the party arrived in force, intending to butcher orcs and/or have Krunch talk to them. That impromptu negotiation session ended with Krunch and Clockwork walking weaponless into the orc camp to meet with the orc leader and discuss things.

Show up this week to find how they're going to die horribly!