Days 4 & 5: Investigations & Firebolts!

The next morning Medea and I went out and investigated the main house, while Erron watched Luticia tinker in the barn, and Wraith and Jannott checked out the swampish woods. As expected most of the house was a ruin, we found little loot just some Hide Armor hidden inside a mattress and bunch of rusty weapons and old arrows in the basement. The only thing of genuine value there was a few ancient magical Vampire Arrows which I snagged to hand off to Wraith, as I felt he could get some use out of them. I doubled back to the barn, to see if Luticia could do some smelting or smithing and perhaps restore or melt the rusted weapons. To which she replied she could not, as she was a tinkering Artificer not a smith. I replied that I thought Gnomes and Dwarves were inherently good at such things. In which she took exception to that and was about to throw one of her hammers at me and Erron stood up threateningly. I apologized and skedaddled out of there pretty quickly, it was then that I remembered most dwarf women had beards and that was probably why she was so offended.
 
I went out to the old farm fields to check and see if any of the old produce was still growing, and it seemed the orchards were in good order albeit a tad bit wild. It was around this time that Wraith found me and asked me if I could identify some tracks and the danger of the beasts or monster that made him, and indeed they were dangerous. It seemed he came across, besides the obvious common animals, some Griffin, Dretch, and Slaadi tracks. The Griffin is threatening but not nearly as disconcerting as Dretches and Slaads. The former is a Lesser Demon of the Abyss and the latter is an utterly terrifying Abomination of Limbo, neither of which should be found here on the Material Plane. I don't know what black magicks the Emperor brought forth with his damned book burning War, but he is surely at the heart of this somehow. The illiterate power word stunning git.
 
After some further investigation through our knowledge and the use of Jannott's magic ring, we found the Dretch lair. We made our way back to the barn after Medea called us for dinner and we made plans to attack it at dawn, and while I was at it I gave Wraith the arrows I found which he was extremely grateful for and he casually mentioned that it may be time for him to tell us more about his family... but he would do so later.
 
The next day Luticia gifted Medea a Bag of Holding and I a Wand of Secrets, she both wanted us to test her toys out and wanted us to help keep her and Erron safe while we all investigated the Dretch lair. We found the place easily enough, especially withe combined skills of our resident monster hunter Wraith and resident know it all Bran (me). We noticed quickly that there was at least 6 of the fiends down in the lair, we would've confronted them directly but we quickly realized that their presence produced a thick miasma of poison fog like gas that hung over in their den like a foul musk. It was then that Medea and quickly nodded at each other attempted to light the gas aflame, as we both have found fire to be the best solution when dealing with unknown enemies. The answer is to always Fire to every question.
 
Luticia and Jannott caught on quickly to our plan, and joined in adding their sparks and flames to ours. The resulting explosion was near deafening and singed all of us. The Dretch were most definitely dead, but we were almost as well. Rather than loot their layer, we decided to double back to the barn and rest awhile... and to sleep off our burns and injuries. But before we left I attempted to use my Obsidian Shard, subtly mind you, to absorb their 6 demonic souls. Unfortunately, those 6 souls were only equal to 1 normal soul. Still better than no soul, believe me.