A group of gnolls in Brackenmill reached out to the resistance and they're offering to help. Someone needs to go meet with them and suss out what exactly is going on. That someone turned out to be the Butchers of Meadowfen.
Camped on the way to Brackenmill they could hear a pounding in the distance through several watches. They headed that way and came to a quarry. In the bottom was a large mechanical suit with Stitches (the mapach 06: Escort to Winnowing Reach) sitting in the top of it. He was cutting out rock that were five feet cubes and stacking them to the side. Examining a bit closer it looked like he was partly integrated into the machine and had a glazed over look in his eyes.
Inside an office was a gnoll that didn't have much information to offer, other than he was glad it wasn't him stuck in that thing. The party took the gnoll with them, debated for a bit, and decided Stitches wouldn't want to be left like that. They did a mercy killing and went on their way.
At Winnowing reach they met up with their contact, and Jerbeen named Juno. That night he took them to meet Tisk who had reached out to the Resistance and wanted to meet with someone who was "higher up."
The meeting went well, although all she wanted to do was set up another meeting with her benefactor who was out of town. She described him as a business-gnoll who hoped that folk in humblewood could live peacefully alongside gnolls. After some casting of Zone of Truth and Detect Magic, the party trusted her.
The next day the party met Tisk again at a park dedicated to Ardea in a neighborhood that was completely controlled by gnolls. The first gnoll families had moved into this area and the party pretended to be delivering food to be allowed in.
Tisk said she'd contacted Clawmark, her patron, and he could meet them at midnight in the garden of heroes.
That night they went to the garden, a hedge maze with statues of folk from Humblewood. At the Center Clawmark waited for them and Cyrus immediately recognized him as The Scorpion, having seen him briefly in battle (Chapter 6).
The Scorpion didn't recognize them and the party deceived him into thinking they could arrange a meeting with Kuato in two days. The Scorpion agreed.
The party picked a spot for an ambush and took The Scorpion there. He had several gnoll guards with him and they all agreed to give up their weapons to meet with Kuato. Once they did this, the party attacked.
The guards weren't very difficult to deal with, but the Scorpion, even with his poisoned blades taken away, proved much harder. Whenever someone scored a particularly damaging blow he would disappear into shadow and a shadow beast would take his place until it was defeated. Then The Scorpion would appear again.
At last it looked like they were about to defeat him when he pressed his back into the rock wall where they'd pinned him and he melted into the stone. Adina was familiar with this spell and new it could only last eight hours, but he could emerge at any time. The party set up a watch and waited.
After the full eight hours The Scorpion appeared again having long rested. He was at full power and the fight began all over again. Although Cyrus went down at one point the party was able to defeat The Scorpion with Amachai using his spiritual weapon to deal the killing blow.