Auric Shows the Forge's Hidden Way In

The Whispwoods left the Pink Pony Girls lost without Arthur and without a clear direction.

Then Auric ran into the story.

He was an elf, a failed merchant with Astrology and Healing in his background, and he was running from something hard enough to jump through a portal into the past. The party followed and found themselves connected to a time-altered version of Gertie's Forge.

That made the wandering useful.

Inside the altered forge thread, Auric helped the party understand how they might enter the forge in the present and rescue Dallas Dalton's mother, K'Zhara Flamehand, along with the surviving fire djinni embersmiths enslaved there. The key was not a front gate or a heroic assault. It was a hole.

K'Zhara had begun digging from inside the forge out toward the caves surrounding the Whispwoods.

The party found that hidden tunnel in the past and realized it might still exist in the present. What had been confusion became a plan: find the present-day version of K'Zhara's tunnel and use it to enter Gertie's Forge.

The group escaped after fighting hags.

Auric stayed behind to hold them off.

He turned the Whispwoods from delay into direction, and became one more person the party might someday need to account for.