It was Myrtel of 1493, year of the purple dragons, with spring about
to blossom into summer, as the heroes escorted Oreoth back to town.
Failing their collective perception checks, five orcs ambushed them,
committing suicide by adventurer (save for the one who eventually failed
his morale check).  Rimaldo did a brief (dirt) nap during the fight,
and the group collected a whopping 13gp, plus some axes and hides.

Random intermission aside, the group chatted with Oreoth on the way
back to town, learning of his university roots and original interests
in the local area, and his eventual discovery of the eye, followed by
developing paranoia and eventual slide into attempted rote teaching of
mindless undead.

Lamthanc continued to have nightmares, and was startled to wake up
facing Harold.  He then recruited her to write nasty review letters to
the university paper, attempting to posthumously squelch his detractors
(or perhaps simply detractors of theories he fondly cherished).

The heroes traded in the most of the bandit horses for 200gp (keeping
the giant one for Lamthanc's future ride), and got another 100gp for
the random weapons and armor.

Getting on to the next task, they looked into the scary figures in the
quarry.  The owner of the quarry, Meliko, was fairly closemouthed about
the troubles, claiming it's just scary stories the quarry workers are
telling each other, and tried to point us in the direction of a bandit
cave, said to have treasure in it.

Not happy with Meliko's response, but not willing to pressure her,
the group decides to pull back, and return to the quarry by night.
They spend the day in town, checking their contacts (both in general and
inquiring about Meliko).  They do find out that the local area has been
safe for a few generations, and has only been getting hazardous in the
past six months or so.  Volvo, Rimaldo's harper contact, comments that
he's seen the tanner with one of the amulets the bandits had.

That night, the group sneaks in and steaks out the quarry.  Not much
happens, so they poked around a bit and found a secluded door leading into
the hillside.  Inside are hallways of worked stone and sliding doors with
bas-reliefs of dwarves - clearly dwarven ruins!  Some exploration leads
to a trap, though, as someone drops cages onto the group (and laughs
a bit about it).  In fact, it's a line of eleven or so cages in a row.
With a bit of work (mainly on the part of the strong types), the group
manages to retreat from the area, deciding to circle around.

We run across a room with a number of gnawed skeletons, complete with
satiated giant rats.  We give the rats a wide berth, but they don't seem
interested in more food at the moment.  We do notice that at least one of
the corpses has the symbol from the bandits branded onto its head, though.

A later room has a repaired statue in the center, with offerings about it.
Then, cultists swarm in from another door!  Five or so thugs would give
us little pause, but their leader is clearly Larak, a mid-level caster
who leads with slow and wears stone splint armor.  We recognize some of
the thugs from around the town.  Eventually, the thugs are defeated,
and the caster flees at high speed.  We give first aid to the thugs,
and drag them back to the entrance that we know of.