Yay, I broke through into the love duo and created a love triangle! I mean my character did. But it was my brilliant efforts that made it happen.

[SheShe] it was pretty devious. 

SheShe's the DM for this run if you recall and she was rooting me on. Bear and Gwen can't have all the fun and it's not an isekai harem with only a couple, but just as Ashley predicted, there'll be no funny business, it's just pg13 hugs, kisses and romcom blundering and embarrassing situations because that's more fun anyway.

So, now our happy trio is off to the cabin where I grew up, about 10 miles north in the same woods. About a in-game year ago the cabin came under siege by a new faction that are otherwise just a bunch of unaffiliated criminals led as bandits in this area. My master, who was a capable witch, was simply overwhelmed and lost. I escaped in the melee but I couldn't leave the area because of my slave collar. I hid in the general vicinity for months, nearly starved to death waiting for the bandits to move on, but they didn't and when I had an opportunity, I went back and ripped the control ring for my collar off my old master's dead finger and put it on myself, thereby becoming my own master. However, the collar is really made for a child and it's a little tight, plus it's triggered to kill me if anyone tries to take this off. The ring and collar are tied and I can't take either off and it also blocks my witchy-druidic magic so we got to get it off.

That's where we're going next.

What we just finished doing was playing with the crafting system Bear and Joy developed and since Bear has tinkering proficiency, he can make and improve crude things. So he made me a set of fur armor from tanned pelts he skinned off rabbits and foxes, shoes, undergarments out of a woolen cloak we found foraging and fur lined shoes. With my 19 Dexterity I'm sitting pretty at 15AC which is decent. So with a short sword we got from the bandits who held Gwen and a bow Bear made from wood, thread and sinew, I'm ready to help fight if we run into trouble.

We got rations, both Bear and I have cooking proficiency, arrows that bear made and decent gear all around, now it's only a matter of getting there while evading big encounters and scouting out or searching the cabin for three keys to go in the little holes in my collar in hopes it will come off.

Bear also made me a boiled leather sleeve so if the collar does spring blades to cut my neck, they'll harmlessly embed in the hide and give us another chance to get the collar open. Since it's magically shielded, mechanically opening or cutting it off are our only options. If we can't get it off, we'll have to wait till Neverwinter to convince a blacksmith to help.

This is so harrowing! In this forest we've already seen bandits, a bugbear leading goblins, an owlbear, and druids of the forest. Meta: we're using modified homebrew canned tables and rare rolls every hour to determine if and what we encounter. It's been really fun and challenging. That's all we do now in our free time and it's like we discovered a whole new way to live akin to the legends of shared wonderlands and other RP fun.