Sandbox Campaign Part 5: Dungeon Denizens and DMPCs

This is part 5 of my ongoing account of the sandbox campaign I am currently running.  Updates are frequent, if irregular, and at the end of each post I talk about one or more subjects pertaining to the adventure but more broadly applicable to all campaigns.  You can find the previous parts here.

After checking out several villages, the party returned to Castle Morbis for some R&R.  Monty, meanwhile, had abandoned Crow Dance to his barbarian wanderings and finally reached the castle as well.  After offending the guards at the main entrance, he bluffed his way into a postern gate.  He wandered around the town, searching for his party, and ended up taking a liking to the Buxom Witch.

The rest of the party (sans Zel and Rikkit) also bummed around town, searching for a venue for Kat's bardic stylings after she rolled two natural 1s in a row on perform checks in the Rusty Glaive.  They returned to the Buxom Witch - Kat in disguise since she had punched the barkeep last time - and met up with Monty.  Soon, the barkeep offered to sell Monty a map to a treasure guarded by an orc horde.  Monty, not realizing that this was the same map that sent Sir Hardrig to his doom, and also not wanting to pay for the treasure map, punched the barkeep, threw down a smokestick, and tried but failed to steal the map.  He ended up fleeing down the street pursued by the barkeep's hired thugs, where he ran into Guy de la Rue.  Guy was a seasoned fighter who had served with Sigrid's oldest brother Ranulf and had come up in search of Sigrid with her middle brother Bjorn.  Now that that situation was resolved, he was just bumming around Castle Morbis looking for work.  He helped Monty dispatch the thugs while the rest of the party stole the map, failed to remain unnoticed, and failed to convince the barmaids that they were just rescuing the map from a fire.  The whole party fled to the dwarven smithy, where they told their side of the story to Dorninn the armourer, who promised to pass it on to the guards.  The party decided to head out to the mountains in search of the rumored underground pass while the situation in town cooled down.