Hello again. Today started off with a bang.

Literally.

I was woken up by a muffled explosion. Like someone had stuffed a lightning bolt into a feather mattress. Fittingly, this sound was followed shortly by the fowl smell of burning feathers. Along with another series of bangs.

Scrambling outside I saw a bizzare sight.

Owls. Dozens of small owls flitting and soaring silently through the still air inside the tunnels. There in their midst flew Fen, cackling and crackling with hysteric laughter and lightning as he buzzed through the bewildered birds.

I froze for a few seconds. Caught completely off guard by the bizarre sight before me. Until a scorched owl crashed into my face, sending me back down the stairs into the bowels of our camp for the night.

Which is where I noticed that these owls were not as owlish as I had originally though. Small though they were they actual had three sets of limbs. Sturdy talons and pounces for legs, broad feathered wings, and small sinewy arms tucked into their chest plumage.

Simple clothes made of fish skin and molted feathers wrapped around what I guess you could call hips? Bound by thin cords of rope.

Oddest owl I have ever seen.

Julius hopped past me as I was examining the strange fowl and upon looking at the skirmish going on outside he blew up. Exploding into the air with a highpitched squeal of unmatched fury. Julius crashed into one of the largest odd-owls above. This one had a golden sash wrapped around its chest. Made from Bobs beard.

I guess we had found the culprits behind the prank.

Lena and Onica had just been watching quietly, but like me they noticed the dwarf beard sash. Putting two and two together and getting pissed off. They joined the fight.

Serpents of water launched from the river below, smashing holes into the odd-owl horde. More and more kept arriving, reinforcing their allies and falling to the slaughter. Onica was largely ineffectual, unable to fly and lacking ranged weapons she watched, tail lashing furiously, as the fiends that made a fool of her flew overhead.

That is, until she asked Lena to make her some ice javelins.

Shortly after that, skewered owls fell by the dozens. She never missed as far as I could tell. Nailing the odd-owls in their erratic flights, often hitting three or more in a single throw.

I was content to watch my friends get their much needed release and catharsis after a very stressful few days. So I simply torched any odd-owls that looked like they might be running away. Or when I got bored.

Feathers filled the air as the waters below us became choked with corpses. Pale eyeless fish dragged them underwater, more and more gathering to the impromptu feast. One particularily large specimen, I named it Spot, would swallow up a dozen or so at a time.

The odd-owls finally ceased running into the fire. The few who escaped led us directly to their home. Which we wrecked. I kinda feel bad about our track record for peaceful interactions with other peoples homes.

Their home was a scratched out depression in the side of a large cave. Nests of feathers and bones held all the loot the odd-owls thought worth taking. Mostly raw ores and shiny fish scales.

Julius got his loot back, plus a giant nest full of raw gold nuggets. He melted them down and with some help from Lena and me managed to get them to form rough blocks of gold. He has used them as the base upon which he rests the remainder of his hoard.

Lifting up his loot at the same time as making a statement about where mere gold belongs in his hoard.

Lena made a beautiful feather headress, hiding her shorn head and decorating herself with the remains of her fallen enemies at the same time. She and Onica made some dyes and spent several hours coloring the largest most perfect feathers we could find. Arranging them from dark blues and purples at the tips to bright yellows and greens in the middle with vibrant reds and oranges at the bases.

Of course, since this is Onicas dye job, all the colors are derived from deadly and rare poisons.

Making her headress both very colorful, and very poisonous. If she is ever in danger, and for whatever reason can't use her water tingles to get out of it. Then she can prick her foe with a feather quill, and it'll be a race to see which poison kills them first. Second most dangerous piece of headwear I have ever seen.

Fen is the first most dangerous piece of headwear I have ever seen.

Redeemed and loaded full of sincere apologies from all of us for thinking him the prankster, Fen has been gloating all day. It's annoying, but he has more than earned the right to a little gloating.

I don't know why the odd-owls were pranking and robbing us, but if not for him I wonder if we would have ever noticed?

We would have continued to blame one another and eventually probably would have had a falling out. Possibly even fought to the death. So I for one, am more than willing to let the little feller gloat.

Other than that, lets see, Lena made a bunch of huge beds out of the odd-owl down. They are super soft and comfy.

Onica is much more relaxed now that she has brutally murdered those responsible for her freakout.

Julius is almost, wait, no, is literally aglow with pleasure about his new treasure.

Fen is happy, and gloaty.

And we had dinner as a group today! A feeling of forgiveness and ruefulness over our behavior settled down any ruffled feathers and soon we were retelling our favorite kills from this mornings scrum.

Mine was when Julius rode the back of a burning odd-owl into a flock of its friends and detonated with such force it turned them all into so much ash.

Lena preffered the time Onica managed to get so many odd-owls on a single javelin that when it hit the last one in its trajectory it just bounced off, and hit Fen on the way down. Exploding into feathers, ice shards, and electricity as the surprised hat panicked.

Onica herself like the time Fen used the air itself to force a bunch of odd-owls to crash into one another and fall directly into Spots mouth.

Julius just seemed to like every moment equally.

It has been a good day.

We had persecuted an innocent hat, and been dealing poorly with a lot of stress. Today we cleared the air, and relaxed with some light carnage.

I have high hopes of tomorrow. I have a feeling we are close to getting out of these gloomy tunnels!

Goodnight.