Well the good news is that my players aren't total nitwit murder hobos.

They got to Cotra and accepted the mayor's rebukes surprisingly well and went off to Formello like good little adventurers. Granted they wanted to go with a military caravan (part way, just to Dunvo) which meant that it took them longer, I suppose that the Nephil raids and ambushes were getting to them.

Up in the Formello cave they came within a hair's breadth of slaughtering an entire extended family. Formello is the site of a developing social conflict. Wealthy landowners have everything outside the town and run plantation style farming with indebited tenant farmers policed by "farmhands" who are really just thugs. When hassled by four level 3 toughs my players will gleefully start plotting the extermination of entire families based only on a thug's bragging. Eventually cooler heads prevailed, the lady playing the ranger is a wonderful steadying influence on these guys.

In Formello proper they discovered that the town is having troubles, the mayor can't access the treasury, guards are deserting because they haven't been paid, etc. etc. etc. They agreed to help the mayor get the mayoral necklace back and were promised the royal token and some bars of mixed mithril and adamantite from the treasury. Some people still have trouble listening when NPCs speak and the old priestess, Mother Claudette, berated them for being deaf. Still I'm pretty sure that at least two people caught the bit about her being willing to raise some of them from the dead.

The Nephil castle is about 45 miles cross-country (ok, through tunnels without roads or trails) from Formello. They covered the first thirty miles in a day, with the fire-hippogriff "scouting" above them. Needless to say they encountered nothing because all the gnolls saw them coming from miles away. Now I've previously stressed that the major tribe of gnolls (the Nephil) are bloodthirsty, barbaric, united, and organized. Now over a week ago about 100 miles south of the castle a group of adventurers, exactly matching the PCs description, beat four raiding parties (the archer gnolls have hide and move silently as trained skills, there were survivors from every fight). So the gnolls know to watch out for a party with a flaming hipogriff flying around and to not attack it with less than overwhelming force. The warlock got a smart idea and went scouting invisibily just before the party rounded the last bend to the bridge (map again, Formello is 54 and the Nephil castle is 55) only to find about eighty gnolls with a heavy emphasis on shamen and archers guarding it. Pretty much the bridge guards, three scouting encounters, and some nearby reinforcements. Thankfully the party decided to back off, other wise that would have been a pain of a combat to run. They backtracked a couple hours to the next tunnel that meet the river (oh look, the sorcerer failed a Con check and is fatigued with six subdual damage), spent twenty minutes arguing about hiding the sorcerer's familiar before settling on Darkness and Ebon Eyes as a temporary fix. Then they swam/floated across the wide, slow river and made an important spot check. The ranger saw a concealed campfire from the squad guarding the back door. One short fight later they were discussing food philosophy with a gnoll prisoner (dead is meat, meat is food, dead is food) and learned about the back door.

We left off at a break in combat. They got in (and left the hippogriff outside) and promptly started a two way fight that the beguiler managed with the most effective and helpful use of the open/close cantrip I've ever seen. So it's September 15th or 16th and the party is in an extended fight with a castle full of gnolls. While it's mostly low threat mooks there are a few surprises around and they'll eventually face Anastasia (priestess of Makhleb with two staching smite abilities and a pet demon) and the gnoll chiefs.