Oh boy, webs. Good thing she has BLESSING OF FREEDOM lol jk she is like level five and gets nothing. 

Hammer? Hammer. 

Mama spider spits webs at her attackers but Diane can mostly burn these off before they land.

Even spiders of this size are still vulnerable to hammers, it turns out.

Theriel is definitely beginning to appreciate the merits of the satisfying crunching noise of spider exoskeleton. 

Respawn is not a real thing and the giant mama spider is not going to suddenly re-exist directly on her face if she takes her time searching the cave without the advantage of only being able to interact with interesting objects, right? 

The spider obligingly stays dead. The corpse doesn't even despawn.

Awesome. 

Are any of these desiccated husks recently enough captured that they might still be dying - a sometimes interruptible process! - or are they all very extremely corpses? 

They are all very extremely corpses.

Mostly kobolds, some wolfs, deer, even a small bear, and a couple humans. One of them has another badge from the Stonemason's Guild.

Interesting. She'll grab the badge and update her notebook: 

(...)

6. Scout other mine(s) Report back to Dughan

7. gold dust for Remy (kobolds)

Jasperlode full of giant spiders, incl. very large one (killed kobolds, wildlife, ?Defias?). 

8. get some kind of gloves ASAP!

Useful info is great but corpse dust and spiderwebs are a bad texture and she is now going to be twitchy and unhappy until she can shove her hands into the stream or something. 

Anything else of interest before they leave the mine and see about fighting some of those outdoor kobolds? 

No, that pretty much covers it.

Excellent. Then they will go fight kobolds until they have a reasonable quantity of candle wax, gold dust, and perhaps, if she can find one wielding a mining shovel, a two-handed weapon slightly better than her battered wooden hammer. 

She can find such a thing. The metal head is in reasonably condition, but the haft needs replacing.

Hrm. Solving this by cutting down a tree definitely requires more tools than she has but it shouldn't be impossible to find a nice solid stick and the right fastening hardware back in town? 

It's a little strange in concept having to just sort of decide when they have enough wax and dust, having not been told a quantity, but in practice she supposes they are probably arriving at sensibly sized item stacks by the fact that one can only fit so many miscellaneous loot objects, quest items, parts of shovels, etcetera in an actual physical volume-limited backpack. 

Back to Goldshire! 

Back to town!

Remy is still lurking on the outskirts, if she wants to get rid of the contraband(?) before talking with law enforcement.

Oh, good. Her backup plan if he wasn't immediately findable was just going to be to go about her other business and vaguely expect him to turn up at some point. 

She will turn over the possibly contraband and refrain from asking pointed questions about tax evasion; all things considered, the people of this local area do not really appear to be getting their money's worth for their taxes. 

They get some money in exchange, and a tip about murlocs attacking travelers on the eastern road.

"Pleasure doing business with you," she tells Remy cheerily, and only makes it about ten steps from him before she is unable to resist the urge to add, "gosh, murlocs! I bet they are also needlessly adorable." 

This is probably an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm, as it was with the kobolds, but here we are. 

"Aren't they, like, slimy?"

"They are teeny and shouty and hilarious. And the little ones are tadpoles!" Pause. "But also probably yes and I should appreciate their cuteness only from a reasonable distance." 

"Reasonable as defined by one hammer?"

Giggle. "Exactly. Precisely one hammer-length plus," she stretches an arm out as if to measure it, "like two and a half feet." 

Diane nods. "Mhm, mhm. I think I'll stick to thirty yards."

Nod nod. "Admittedly better for not getting stuff on you! Speaking of which, I desperately need to wash my hands." 

... The inn probably does not have running water, does it. She'll be happy to wash a few dishes if that gets her access to soap? 

There's a pump around the back. No one will mind if she uses it a bit.

Oh, fabulous. She will scrub all of the aaaaaaaa off her hands, in that case, and then return to the main room, where she will exchange candle wax for additional money and sit down at a table to start up a transaction ledger and quietly mourn Excel. 

"What are you doing?" Diane asks curiously.

"Budgeting chart!" She shows Diane her nascent three-column chart ("thing," "amount," "total", currently containing such entries as "Milly wine rescue, +1s" and "notebook, -2s40c", with the "total" column not yet filled) and explains, "I'm going to add 'em up and compare against how much money I actually have to make sure I didn't forget anything. It's mostly for reassuring myself that I'm keeping on top of things. Although also in theory then in like five years if I am diligent about tracking I can draw graphs and those are neat."