Freshly rested and ready to deal with the bandit menace, Brother Sully tries to convince Lady Kophyn Mizzar to lend him a squad of her men-at-arms to support the party. He gets reaction roll of 11% with Charisma mod to 36% (unsure/with 55% chance of negative) and gets a 46% on the followup. Apparently, her Grace likes Sully, but isn't so besmitten that to give up her muscle. Guess they'll "just be friends"...
Considering the distance involved and the fact that party's mercs are footsloggers, Sully tries to convince her to cough up some horses and has better luck (modified reaction roll of 58% with a followup 19% to tip the balance in his favor). The PCs have light riding horses, so I rule Lady Kophyn offers similar horses so the party now has a mounted move rate of 24" which translates to 24 miles of travel per day.
The party decides to head out to the location where Kophra Era spotted the bandit camp to see if they can make contact. I randomly generated the terrain and checked for encounters. Luckily no nasty wandering monsters, but the party spots some ruins and hints of some large settlements further north. They mark their map and make notes for further exploration later. They see the forested hills mentioned by Kophra and leave the load to begin searching for the bandits. Leaving the men-at-arms to make camp, the party dismounts and commences the search to take advantage of the deepening shadows of early evening.
Lightfinger Louie scouts ahead via Move Silently/Hide in Shadows with Bro-thazarr, Slicer, and Mighty Redneck behind following at a distance. Bro-thazarr has his Sleep spell ready while the remaining party members have their missile weapons prepared. Brother Sully has prepared Cure Light Wounds and Brother Fitzy has Sanctuary ready to go. They've all worked out a system of hand signals and bird whistles to communicate intent if the bandits are discovered.
After an hour or so, the scouts spot the camp. Let's see if Louie snuck up on the camp:
Lightfinger Louie: Move Silently (Needs 25% and succeeds with a 19% ) and Hide in Shadows (Needs 25% and fails with a 75%). This means one of the bandit guards spots him so we need to see if Louie lives to steal another day. I make an encounter check and Louie kills it with an 80% roll - Hermes has blessed Louie this night!
The bandit guard taps Louie on the shoulder, nearly causing him to fill his breeches, and says "Ere now, mate - yer tradecraft needs some work. Tell yer crew to come on up and have a drink. The venison will be ready shortly and we're all too famished to start using you lot as pin cushions." Soft chuckling echoes from the tops of the trees and the party clearly realizes they're surrounded and outgunned, so they stow their weapons and make their way to the camp.
The party enters the camp and sees numerous campfires burning as the smell of roasting meat fills the evening air. A quick glance shows there are at least 100 dishevelled highwaymen in the camp, performing a variety of upkeep tasks in a likely futile attempt to keep their tattered clothes and battered equipment from disintegrating due to obvious hard use. The organization of the outlaws is obvious, however. These are clearly former soldiers fallen on hard times and not a band of degenerate reavers.
They are brought to the Tazennarit, the female leader of the bandit group. I roll for encounter reaction and "Face" Sully again delivers the goods (modified roll of 96%). After some verbal sparring, Tazennarit tells the party that the group was once soldiers in the cities to the north, but were forced to flee south after a devastating suprise attack of savage mounted nomads from the Cold Wastes and a Hobgoblin Legion allied with a combined force of ogre magi and orcs/ogrillons. She has no idea why these groups have allied, what their goals are or what the fate befell their home city of Tallow Watch. As a matter of survival, they've been raiding what few caravans have been coming south, but to little avail. These caravans have been refugees themselves, more often than not, and Tazennarit has little interest in obliterating common folk. It's highly suspicious that they haven't encountered large numbers of refugees, and she is at a loss to explain what's happening.
Brother Sully, moved by the group's situation, makes Lady Kophyn's offer: amnesty for all deeds and the right to settle around The Croaking Castle of the Miraculous Toad for usual taxation and militia commitments. A modified reaction roll of 96% means that Tazennarit enthusiastically accepts Lady Kophryn's offer and agree to meet with her to discuss settlement at what she has dubbed Fort Rackham. The party summons the men-at-arms and they all spend an uneventful night at camp.
Tazennarit also updates the party's map so they have a better idea of what the north looks like.
Until next time...
Experience Points:
XP for defeating 112 bandits: 112x14 + 4hp/bandit (avg) = 2016xp
GP reward from Lady Kophyn for each PC (rolled a 3 on d6x100 = 300gp)
Total: 4116xp (divided by 7 = 588xp each; 647xp for those with attribute bonuses)
No comments:
Post a Comment