The group makes contact with the delegation and farmers trapped by
the orcs, and work on setting up defenses and defensive formations.
Then the orcs attack!  So many orcs, and a couple of orags leading them,
but some of the locals can fight, and we eventually kill the orags and
drive off or capture the remaining orcs (2650 xp).  We convince folks to
not simply kill the orcs, but have them perform community service instead.

We also decide the hippogriff, while nice, are too risky to use in our
line of business, and trade them to the farmers in exchange for some
decent horses.  We then head over to Beliard, and boat upriver to Yartar.
We manage to upgrade a lot of armor, thanks to the loot from the orcs
(two suits of used plate mail, which get converted to two suits of usable
plate mail for 900 gp each) and the knights (900 gp for the riding bats).

We decide to head back to Red Larch to see what's up, and run across
various tasks that we might have done earlier, had we passed this way,
but now pass by as we've got more important things to do (in Triboar, a
caravan from Waterdeep is late, in Westbridge, rumors of people abducted
by raiders).

Reaching Red Larch, we find kids playing zombie attack, and discover
our debt has been written off as our tales of strangers being sacrified
turns out to have been verified, and some of the villagers implicated.
We've also been granted the house owned by the former quarry owner (one
of the people implicated in the sacrifices - presumably no one else
wants it right now).