So the party heads on to Vrendi and buys some equipment there. The tribes in this area mostly trade pelts for grain and vice versa. They come across a small house in the clearing and Crummy nearly gets shot by the owner. They strike a bargain to take his son, Guy (mighty but girly), on their adventures. They all head on eastward and rest at an empty platform. By now, the party is 2 to 3 weeks away from Corrin. The group reaches Orathas and aim to stay at The Cow's Coin. Bards play, rogue steals, fighter goes "Oooooo!".

Upon reaching Bardic College (aka B.C.[DM comment: Venmoor College of Music]), Lady Constance directs the group to sit down with a gnome girl (Jesse Willowbrook) together with a magical singing sword (Alechem) and another girl (Ceria from Mutelli) with many pockets in her outfit. The headmaster of B.C. is Cerian Cobb. He explains that there are 3 main schools: espionage, combat, and knowledge. The master of knowledge is Constance(a Fili). Master of assassin is Leit (a Hellion) and master of blades is Merrick (a Tiarna). The party's so-called form teacher and overall baby-sitter is Rhombur Dragair. He instructs the group to take part in the gauntlet and end up in 2nd place but learnt about the signs used in such missions.

After the gauntlet, the group gets a case of itchy-backside and accept another mission readily. This turns out to be one headache of a mission. Their mission is to infiltrate a party thrown by Lord Gothmore for his son, Dragan Gothmore, and find out who will muder who and stop it before it happens. The other contending school of bards [Carsis Imperial Bardic College] have the same mission however, their instructions are to let the murder take place and just apprehend the culprit. It turned out that Ayela Damarura, Dragan's fiancee, wanted to murder Dragan but the group managed to stop this just in time. On top of this, Ceria has a major crush on one of the bards [Prince Armand Ecaz] from the competing school.

Because the party never learnt their lesson and their backsides were still itchy, they accepted another mission which was to get into an abandoned mansion overrun by goblins and retrieve an urn containing the ashes of a dead wife (primary mission) and some guy's sword locked away in the weapons vault (secondary mission). In return, the party was allowed to take any 6 weapons from the vault. Quinlan tells his brother Richard that he must go and attend to some pressing matters and heads off without so much as a goodbye kiss. Jesse and Alechem too, sit this one out and never kissed any of the group.

When the party reaches the mansion, Crummy and Richard try to find a way in while Guy and Ceria wait in the bushes. Crummy fails to pick the safe and they both get injured. While waiting for the two, Guy spots a mechanical owl that flies away immediately when noticed. Crummy and Richard come back and Guy and Ceria laugh at their black faces. The four decide to head in through the kitchen where they chance upon a shaman goblin with an almost naked human (ugh, disgusting) bound and hanging from the ceiling. After slaying the goblin, the human is freed and introduces himself as Jon Storm. He turns out to be a guest who was living here until it got sieged by goblins. The group (with a new member) search the mansion for the urn and find it eventually with a few hitches along the way; namely wargs.

They sneak down to the vault while desperately searching for traps. The vault door unlocks with the password being 'T-H-E-R-E-S-A', the name of the ashes in the urn, and the party receives super duper uber items! Now in a hurry, the five of them go back out the same way they came and return to good ol' B.C. But when they reach there, Rhombur is seen with a stressful face and informs the party that Jesse is in a coma with minor wounds and multiple bruises. Alechem is nowhere to be seen. To top it all off, Jesse's parents intend to sue B.C. What will the group do next?