Session 4 Downtime: Rocking Out at Fort Rackham

The party breaks camp in the morning and returns with Tazennarit to the Croaking Castle of the Miraculous Toad (hex 300.298). Lady Kophyn does an admirable job of covering her surprise, but Brother Sully is a student of humanity and sees that she didn't expect them to actually succeed in the mission. Negotiations are quickly concluded with Tazennarit and she is established as the commander of Fort Rackham (hex 300.297) with the title of Knight-Protector. Lady Kophyn provides her with sufficient materiel and tradesmen to repair the fort and begin settlement. The fort is in the mountains overlooking the northern roads with excellent views and has a small thorpe nearby with some hardy villagers. The surrounding land is suitable for shepherding, lumbering, quarries and sustenance farming. With some work, the former bandits should be able to fit in with the villagers and prosper in their new home.

Flush with the reward money, Brother Fitzy and Bro-thazarr are dispatched to Valthrun to settle as many of the party's outstanding debts as possible and restock their supplies. Lightfingers Louie and Slicer join them to see if they can pick up any leads on some loot, since their collective finances are still in shambles. Brother Sully, Brogallo and Mighty Redneck will spend time among the denizens of the Croaking Castle and Fort Rackham to see if they gain get more information about the nearby environs (and leads to some cash, or course). Brogallo's mercs are quietly drunk and passed out in some hidey hole...as usual.

Based on campaign events so far, the party was able to shake loose the following rumors/information:

1. Orcs have been sighted poking around the Shrine of Lethria (hex 301.300) for unknown reasons (and killed 3 former party members, but nobody outside our group knew that). There is a larger group somewhere south of Valthrun but they've been suspiciously quiet, if they exist at all.
2. The ruined shrine (hex 302.296) north of the Croaking Castle glows with an sickly green light during the new moon. The shrine is apparently dedicated to a now-forgotten serpent god. The Tazennarit's troops have all heard there's fabulous treasure to be found in the ruins, but were never in any condition to try to find it themselves.
3. The metropolis of Tallow Watch (hex 301.295) has fallen to a junta of former officers who were driven from the city of Old Brightwood (hex 302.295) by the nomad/hobgoblin wars. Both cities have sizable populations (50,000+) and Tallow Watch is home to many of the bandit refugees. All of them still have family in the cities and desperately want to discover their fate, but are fearful of the likely tragic news.
4. The new rulers of Old Brightwood have made a truce with the invading hordes by enslaving a sizable portion of the population and offering them as tribute. All orphans and children of criminals have been forced to become jannisaries in a wretched attempt to replenish the decimated military and maintain some sort of control over the city. The hordes are leaving the city unplundered...for now.
5. The hobgoblin hordes that broke the human defenders were driving towards the ruined shrine (hex 301.294) north of Tallow Watch. Nobody knows why they have an interest in it, but it can't be for anything good. On a side note: WTF?? I'm rolling these things everywhere based on DMG pg 173. I better switch to different clacky math rocks...
6. The city of Orchard Hollow (hex 302.294) are still somehow resisting the nomad/hobgoblin/ogre forces. Though smaller than the other nearby (14,000 inhabitants), it has been a famous bastion of Law since time immemorial and has a strong contingent of clerics with heroic paladins as their chamber-militant. This has doubtlessly contributed to their strength but nobody believes they will last long in face of the superior humanoid numbers.

OK we've got a lot of gameable content here. Note that I really haven't done any heavy lifting here. All of the above was generated via the fucking epic AD&D DMG Appendices and I just added some fluff to tie it all together by spending a few minutes thinking about the implied relationships of the random rolls. All names came from free online generators (take your pick - there's a lot of them). I'm harping on this (again) because it repeatedly makes the point that you don't need to endlessly purchase product from people that hate you. Seriously, this stuff is great and blows away the agenda-driven dreck that WoTC is trying to cram down your throat with current edition. 

Let's roll a d6 and see what our next session will explore. We get a 2 so Serpent Shrine it is! Let's hope the party has overcome their PTSD from the last dungeon delve and has better luck. I really would like to see my murder hobos make it past first level at some point...

Session 4: Not so Merry Men

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)