I'm just going to have to accept that these people have an issue with the concept of clues. They almost seem relieved at the appearance of a railroad track.

I ditched the whole concept of exploring a small maze of tunnels south and east of the Tower of Magi, a couple of Survival rolls to avoid getting lost and they got to the directions to Solberg's Tower. It was a spike of black granite, forty feet long and twelve feet across at the base, sticking out of the wall. Now Solberg is a powerful mage and he wants to leave a message for other magic users (the problems here are not going to be solved by just beating them with swords) so the spike has a Magic Mouth spell on it that speaks whenever anyone nearby visibly casts a spell.

"Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? <knock knock> Oh, there it goes. Ah, this is Solberg here. My tower is in a cave on the south side of the river a bit west of Formello. If you don't want to cross the lava there is a secret passage in the north wall."

Which is about twice as long a message as Magic Mouth normally has, but Solberg has Limited Wish. They listened to this message three times, and one player (the youngest and least experienced, but in this case the smartest) wrote down some of it. They immediately latched on to the secret passage in the north wall bit and decided that there must be some sort of teleporter nearby that would take them straight to Solberg. Once I reminded them that they were in a north/south tunnel and there was no "north wall" to search here the decision was made to search the north end of the tunnel. Six miles later the tunnel ended in a swampy bit where two giant frogs tried to eat them. The ranger's animal companion died, the sorcerer's familiar nearly died, and they spent three days smoking 200 lbs of frog meat and searching a mess of mud and rotting vegetation for a magic door that didn't exist.

A week later they got out of the tunnels and into a swamp some thirty miles east of Mertis. Just in time for the second annual giant lizard rodeo. Riding giant lizards, roping and tying medium sized lizards, and rodeo clowning (think bull fighting without a cloak or weapons). The fighter barely won the first event, tied the second, and won the last event by wearing plate armor and still getting bitten twice. The prize was a night of free mushroom beer and a little bit of fame.

On the way north to Formello they stopped by "their" fort, the little ruined post that was cleared in the first week of the campaign. I've decided on an encounter scheme for that ruin, every other time they stop there will be an encounter until they manage to repair and fully man (about 25 full time people) the place. So this time they got a giant slug. Now giant slugs were in AD&D but never got updated to 3.5, and I recall originally reading about one in a Conan book some 20+ years ago. 12hd vermin, 114 hp, DR 10/-, DR 20/piercing, energy resist 30/electric-positive-negative, dislikes 10+ lbs of salt or soap, moves 25' as a move action on a slime trail or as a standard action off a slime trail, AC 16 and 80% fortification, frikken huge (long 10' x 40'), and it always attacked with the Awesome Blow ability. They could have lured it outside the walls and killed it with arrows, if they had enough arrows. Electricity, salt, or soap in large enough quantity would drive it off.

They did one point of damage with one of the ranger's arrows before they ran away. The sorcerer summoned four badgers imbued with Combust spells, no effect. Lesser Orb of Acid, no effect. Alchemical fire and acid, no effect. Air mephit familiar melee had an effect, the familiar died. The fighter lost 2/3 of her hp in two hits. It was seriously embarrassing for them to be routed by something that can only move 25 feet at a time and usually only attack every other round. They won't get a rematch since they told Captain Johnson at Fort Dunvo about it, he'll get his mage to whip up some alchemical spark flasks and take a bunch of guys with long spears to kill it. The sorcerer's next familiar is not going to obey commands, I'll have to run it as an NPC.

Eventually they got to the river by Formello. There was a bit of arguing about whether to go east or west, and if they wanted to be in the north or south bank of the river. Once they understood that there were no banks, just cave walls, they crossed to the north side and searched for magic teleport secret passage things again. I had thought that I made it clear that this spot was a camping stop for caravans, what with the old camp fire rings and piles of giant lizard poop, but apparently I was too oblique. Then they avoided the town and ventured westward into the caverns that are marked on their maps with "Nephilim Lands", which means that there is a very heavy presence of hostile gnoll tribesmen. One friendly patrol of Exile army soldiers later they hiked fifteen miles back to town.

They skipped the bar, the market, the temple, the place advertising adventurer training, and city hall. Instead they bee-lined to the library and talked to Miles, the local wizard. Since Miles hadn't seen Solberg since he graduated from the Tower of the Magi, and didn't know of any local lava rivers/lakes, he directed them to Motrax.

It is now May 29th and the party is in Formello. We have social upheaval with the local landlords abusing the tenant farmers, a new mayor missing the keys to the treasury (taken in the Nephil raid that killed the old mayor who was investigating land law abuses), and some not insignificant plots among the landlords to grab more political power. Plus I don't think that they realize that Motrax is a dragon.