Elmer expresses an interest in finding some medicinal plants and the barkeep at the tavern overhears and suggest that perhaps they should go by the boarding house and talk to Lucas because he’s an avid gardener and has a substantial herb garden. Lucas is a forest gnome and is quite happy to show them his garden and allow them to take some cuttings. Elmer gets a few medicinal mushrooms, but only a few since they’re difficult to grow, and Lucas shows them several medicinal plants they’ve never encountered before, Jorgomob and Wiquire. They travel down to the campsire by the river and Elmer plants a small garden there. Gary adds some improvements to the camp as well, blocking off two of the entrances and adding torch brackets along the walls.

During the night Reg hears something crashing around on the backs and splashing in the river but he doesn’t pursue it. In the morning the party goes to investigate and Gary manages to track the creature until they find a flail snail slowly traveling down the river bank. Gary meditates to get in touch with nature and then manages to communicate in a very basic way with the snail, offering it food if it’ll come hang out at the camp and sort of keep an eye on things. It follows them back to camp and Gary feeds it some jerky. Elmer experiments a little and discovers that snail slime gives you a glow up if you apply it to your skin, giving it a sort of iridescent shimmer. This gives you a bonus to Charisma, but disadvantage on Stealth. Gary asks the snail its name and the best translation is something like “Qweewiq” but with some hand gestures involves as well.

The party heads down to the pirate town and is introduced to Lt. Erdy, the commander of Cpt. Ardent’s smallest ship, a little sloop rigged for catching other smugglers. Lt. Erdy mentions they’ve received word a valuable cargo will be passing through on a smuggler’s ship today and if they’d like the join the hunt for it they’re welcome. A few hours at sea and Lt. Erdy appears to almost immediately come upon a small cutter that runs from the ship and they chase it down. As Erdy and the pirates fire grapnels at the fleeing boat and they begin to pull the crafts together, Gary dives overboard and swims to the cutter and pulls himself up into it. He’s immediately attacked by both swashbucklers. Reg tries to run down a rope to help Gary out but falls in. Twice. Eventually he manages to swim across and even the odds. Elmer stays on the sloop and fires from range and both swashbucklers go down, but not before doing some significant damage to both Gary and Reg, so Elmer heals them up.

They search the cutter and find a potion of dark vision, a potion of bulls’ strength and assorted gems and coinage totally about 1500G. Lt. Erdy also finds a hidden cargo compartment containing a small, heavy ironbound chest full of vials of a thick, black fluid, which she immediately throws overboard. Reg tries to argue for a larger share of treasure but Lt. Erdy points out that the sailors could’ve handled the situation just fine on their own, it was hardly her fault if the party got over excited and engaged early. And on that note they head back to shore and then back to town.