Lonesome Wanderings, Session 45

 In which Badger, Tara, Lien, and Naira...

• Head north from the Keep to the strange Dolmenwood that hides legends and secrets.
• Arrive at one Swinescombe, a small hamlet run by pigs, who greet them with curiosity and give them a tour.
• Discover that there are humans in this town - treated as livestock, fattened up and slaughtered.
• Get blocked from leaving town by 6 large pig farmers, who start cornering them to the village slaughterhouse filled with human meat.
• Escape to the local tavern, where a drunkard pig Old Bart tries to defend them, only to get jeered at by the pig farmers.
• Attempt to flee across the hamlet to the abandoned Church of St. Craven, which the pigs fear due to its association with sausage.
• Have Lien and Naira be gored by pigs during the chase, and carted away for meat, unconscious.
• Have Tara slain by a pig farmer punching her to pulp and taking her meat to the slaughterhouse.
• Have only Badger make it to the church, barely alive with all of his allies either carted away or dead.
• Chat with Old Bart, who saunters over and tells how the pigs ate some black sludge that gave them sentience, and how life is so much worse now than back when they were simply pigs.
• Explore the church and discover a 2' idol that he can carry and move slowly.
• Discovers the pig maintain a distance of 10' from the idol out of fear of St. Craven.
• Uses the idol to ward pigs as he saves Lien and Naira, bringing them back to the church.
• Mourn Tara's passing and spend a week healing in the church, being forced to cook and eat human meat stolen from the slaughterhouse to survive.
• Make friends with Old Bart by buying him daily drinks, and learn that the leader of the region Baron Hogwarsh was bribed by the pigs to ignore the human livestock.
• Plan an escape one night after observing pig guard patrols, with Old Bart helping them escape by providing a drunken distraction at the local tavern.
• Manage to flee Swinescombe, and return to the Keep to lick their wounds and mourn Tara's passing.