as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself.
Oathday, 23 Desnus
After a few more questions, we knew a bit more about the bandit problem. There was a stronghold some fifty miles distant that at one time was a center of law in the area. But times change, and the bandits had taken it over and made it their stronghold. The local daimyo seemed unable (or unwilling) to rout them. Jiro mentioned that, should we be successful, there was a vault or safe that could only be opened by a member of the royal family, inside of which was another ancestral weapon. Chances are good that after the orb’s actions, any of us could open it, but that’s fine – it will keep Ameiko’s identity secret a while longer while still revealing that an heir exists. The logical choice to paint the target on his back, of course, would be me. I carry the sword and the misdirection is one of the easier ways of keeping Ameiko safe.
Jiro had incomplete information about the bandits, but said from reports there may be at least one magic user among them. Since the bandits regularly went out on patrol and harassed other residents, he insisted he stay behind to protect this group and others. In fact, it was one reason he had not been able to personally fix this problem himself – he couldn’t be in two places at once. Well, that, I thought, and the fact that ronin or not, he was still only one person and unless you’re talking squirrels, there’s a limit to how many battles he can carry on at once.
It’s only noon, and with some of us in Kali’s magic chariot, and some of us using windwalk we should easily be able to get there yet today. Since windwalk is so much faster (less than an hour trip), those using it (Qatana, Radella, and Ivan) arrived first and did some scouting. Since the windwalk spell had the capacity for one more, Qatana included me in the spell but I travelled with the chariot on the thinking that while it seemed reasonable to split the group for a short time, it didn’t seem reasonable to put all the fighters into one group.
[later]
The scouting revealed there were two high lookouts which would easily spot (and probably attack, by bow) anybody approaching by ground. But if it’s one thing we’ve learned through Ravenscrag and the oni prison in the woods and countless other incursions – it’s always better to skip the front door. And people often don’t look up. The plan will be to observe when the shift changes and take over a lookout right after it changes, so that we have the maximum time before the incursion is discovered.
Beyond those lookouts set away from the main base, there appears to be a courtyard and structures which may be built into the surrounding cliff. It is possible that we can enter right from a lookout if the stairs there enter the complex.
It got dark about 7:00.
Fireday, 24 Desnus
The watches tend to run about 5 hours, but tend to run longer during the day. Sunrise was about 4:30am, and we’ve now decided to attack after the midnite shift change. Which means we’ll be waiting almost 24 hours for the “right” time. It’s not my first choice, but so far as we know there’s no particular urgency so it’s not worth arguing over.
During the day we kept a low profile and saw one party of bandits return and another, separately, go out. They clearly are still active but not with such frequency that we’d run into any when we take out the lookout.
Kali is preparing Nehali with a thunderstone or two in case we need a diversion; she can airdrop them over on the other side of the compound and the hope is that the bandits will split their resources to deal with that. It’s unlikely they will find, let alone hit, Nehali at night with spells or arrows but her instructions, nevertheless, will be to drop and go.
Starday, 25 Desnus
And sure enough, midnite found Zos, Radella, and Ivan sneaking up on the southernmost outlook post just a few minutes after the shift changed. It took all of six seconds for the lookout to be relieved permanently of his duty, and the rest of us ready to rush in were not necessary. The burned and pincushioned body was placed to one side, and the team entered.
The lookout was small, with a descending stairway. We went down to a large room that had water running through it – we think it is part of the stream we observed earlier when scouting – and was a trifle surprised to find nobody there. The previous lookout had, fortunately for him, apparently continued and had perhaps left the area. Oddly, there were carpentry tools on a table and an elaborate wooden chest in one corner yielded, after some manipulation by Radella, additional items one might find with a master carpenter.
[626] MW carpentry tools
[627] 2 sacks of shellac flakes
[628] ivory palm box
[629] 2 applications of slipperiness salve inside 628
[630] 3 oz of sovereign glue in bronze flask
There were stairs here going up (not to the lookout post) so up we went. At the top we paused, and found basically a storeroom, with bales and boxes of things – but with a door to one end. Listening at that door, we heard snoring. Ivan quietly opened the door, looked inside, and indicated “many”. Kali got a strange look on her face, smiled, and stepped forward. We all knew what was coming next – cloudkill!
As the cloud spread over about 60% of the room, we could see that while many were sleeping, three others were near the center of the room, standing, and talking quietly. They obviously reacted to this opaque cloud but before they could take any action beyond gaping, Kali cast another spell and suddenly they were surrounded by a wall of ice that reached almost to the ceiling.
Now of course while the cloudkill could have an impressive effect over a large area, it also made the area unapproachable by most of us since it was both poisonous and opaque. Ivan seems to have a constant delay poison going on so he could move through it, but he also prefers archery and when you can’t see anything until it is right next to you, that’s not optimal.
Most of the bandits had to get themselves out of bed before they could even attack, and even then many had to try to run out of the cloud. The surprise and even a brief exposure to the cloud certainly counted in our favor, and although it took longer than our “battle” with the lookout, it still took a surprisingly short amount of time. Qatana threw in an aura of madness, always a crowd favorite, as her contribution to the magicks. One disappointing side effect of all this was that one bandit managed to sound an alarm by throwing a thunderstone out the window, which resulted in a large boom. We were a little concerned but then we heard, from outside, another, more distant boom. And it occurred to us – Nehali had dropped hers! We’d intended it be a distraction, but we had no way of knowing that thunderstones were the alarm signal – the whole compound would now think there were intruders from multiple directions! If we had to be discovered, this was the way to do it!!
I and a few others were injured during battle, of course, but never really near death. We healed up using the CLW wands and took inventory:
[631] Scimitar (magic)
[632] composite short bow (magic)
[633] breastplate (magic)
[634] shield (magic)
[635] 20 arrows
[636] 5 whistling arrows
[637] dagger
[638] spear x 15
[639] studded leather armor x 15
[640] kokuri x 15
[641] oil x 15
[642] potion x 15
[643] thunderstone x 14
[644] MW composite longbow x 15
[645] 40 arrows x 15
We’ll identify these things later; we have to keep in mind that an alarm HAS been given and we can expect that sitting still too long will reward us with an attack, eventually.
It made me wish I could just go outside and see the confusion! But first we had to clean up in here. We took out many of the weakened bandits before the enclosed ones