The party arrives back in New Hope without incident, however, on arrival they are greated by the townspeople. The townspeople are overcome with greif and despair while one amongst them keeps a level head. Javorin pulls the party aside and explains that it will take two days for the funeral to be ready. Javorin explains that caskets have to be made and the preacher's son needs to perform the service and time to practice the service as well. Javorin then switches topics and asks the party if they could go and visit the Arapaho village on the other side of the Hudson forest which covers the Minotaur Mountains to let them know about their fallen scouts and to see if they wanted the body back. The party agrees and decides that Roger can take all of them there faster than all one at a time with Buttercup. First however, they decide to take all the bodies to the church and put them in the root cellar except for the Arapaho body which is left in the Sheriff's office. When they drop off the bodies, Earl asks if anyone in the party can read. The only one with any kind of reading skills is Thunderheart. They ask why, and Earl replies that there is some stone slabs sticking out of the ground in the cemetary behind the church and they have some kind of writin' on them. Thunderheart goes and tries to decipher the three slabs, which are headstones dating back to before and right after the appearence of the rifts. Thunderheart can decipher two of them. The first has "XXX" and "May you rest in Peace" written on it and the third one has "XXXV" and "May the Rifts Monsters Die" written on it. They figure that they can always come back and see if the can learn about what is on the middle headstone.
With the problems of travel solved, the party is taken up above the village of New Hope and starts to the south which is the way Roger believes is the Arapaho village. Five minutes into the flight, which Earl is absolutely loving, Earl notices that they are a little of coarse and tells Roger to head southwest instead. After another two minutes, they notice a clearing with odd, sharp angles mostly covered in some kind of purplish moss with odd, shiny and sharp metal bits on the tips of the protrusions from the ground. They agree to get a closer look and while Roger starts to descend into the clearing Earl notices some shadows in the woods that look vaguely familiar, Earl identifies them as minotaurs and starts yelling for Roger to go back up. Roger finally sees what Earl is yelling about and starts ascending his earthen platform after being only twenty feet from touching down in the clearing.
The party, being still a little roughed up from their Simvan encounter and not having their armor repaired yet decide to head for the Arapaho village instead. Along the way, Earl does tell the party that the closest place to repair their armor would be in Scottsbluff which is a two-day ride by horse. The rest of their voyage is uneventful and they arive in the village in about 7 minutes. When they land, they are greeted by three Arapaho dressed in war paint and armed with magnificent looking spears. The Arapaho, seeing the party flying into their village, were naturally untrusting of the party, but Earl spoke the lingo and made them understand that they weren't there to fight but to tell them about the dead scouts that had aided New Hope's Sheriff with the hunting of the worm creature. Earl successfully explained everyone in the party except the Juicer Ralph; For him, Earl was lost for words.
The party comes back with four of the Arapaho Warriors, two to find the missing bodies and two to take back the one body. Roger takes flight and drops off the two seeking the missing bodies where they found the bodies and then takes the other two back to New Hope to pick up the dead Arapaho and takes them back to the Arapaho Village. Then they return to New Hope awaiting the funeral of the dead men.
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