AAR: [8M] War Pigs (2021-03-11 @ 23:59 GMT)

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Anoush
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Joined:Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm
Re: AAR: [8M] War Pigs (2021-03-11 @ 23:59 GMT)

Post by Anoush » Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:03 am

Bloodbeat’s Journal:

Juniper had another lead on the slavers. This time, it was a result of puzzling out the partially burned papers that we’d found at the estate of Dwolgret Woldbuckle. He gathered together our usual group, including Elisen (windling cavalryman and troubadour), Lazulin (troll raider and sun herald), Vralino (ork swordmaster and elementalist), and me.

I’ve already explained about Woldbuckle earlier in this Journal, here. This time, the papers led him to believe that the slavers, led by Woldbuckle, were responsible for a number of attacks on caravans and merchant ships. All the attacks were happening near Sosonopa. We confirmed this with local reports of banditry. I even talked to my contact at the Syrtis embassy, who confirmed that there’d been a series of attacks over the last few months.

In spite of our misgivings that we’d be called in to investigate yet another murder in Sosonopa, we made plans to travel there. But this time we wanted to be noticed. We bought trade good, including some cheap ordinary quartz pieces, and a few small light crystals. We packed everything up into a couple of crates with enough cracks between the slats for the curious to peek in and speculate that the crates contained lots of light crystals, or maybe some even more precious.

We tagged along with a caravan heading from Throal to Sosonopa. At every stop, Juniper and Elisen did their best to let everyone know that we were carrying valuable goods, but that it was so secret that they shouldn’t breathe a word of it. Well, of course, they did, and then some. But that was the plan. We wanted to be noticed so that the bandits — the slavers — attacked us and we’d have a chance to defeat them and maybe even follow them to their hide-out.

We began to hear rumors of someone amassing an army, somewhere north of the Serpent River. For each attack, they’d deploy up to about 20 men in order to overwhelm their target. Ishkarat was blaming Syrtis for the attacks on their ships, and vice versa. We figured that the bandits must have a spotter in Sosonopa; it was the logical place.

Once in Sosonopa, we did suddenly hear a woman cry out, “Murder!”, but we calmly walked away in the opposite direction. We had bigger fish to fry.

More importantly, we caught sight of a man who was trying to look inconspicuous, but it was obvious that he was watching us. Juniper backtracked and followed the tail all the way to our inn. At that point, the tail veered off and headed to the river.

At the inn that evening, Juniper and Elisen talked up our plans to sell living crystal at a community in the Scytha Mountains. It seemed thin and vague to me, but the locals lapped it up. Apparently, murders weren’t enough excitement for Sosonopa.

The next day, we crossed the Serpent by ferry and meandered through the hills. We were rewarded by an attempted ambush from a couple of archers and a few thugs. We managed to defeat them with two still alive to question. This group was hoping to attack us, take the goods and present them to Acufru, the bandit leader, to get into his good graces. They gave us the location of Acufru’s lair, which was west of us, near Blood Wood and north of the Serpent River. They also told us that Acufru used two weapons.

We found Acufru’s lair and surveilled it for a day. It was a fort, with a high wall with archers atop it, and several buildings inside. At any given time we saw at most 10 people, including the archers on the wall. We did note Willow — the illusionist and questor of Dis who we’d fought at a mining operation not too long ago. We saw her moving from one building to another, and then appear to do paperwork of some kind.

There was a portal of some kind in one of the buildings. We saw groups of people enter the building, but then never come back out. Even checking with Lifesight, we couldn’t find those people again. So they must have left through some magical means. We speculated that Willow had set up more of her magical doors.

We planned the attack. I brought up Friendly Darkness to give my allies a buff and some cover, and then snuck into the gate entrance. Once Elisen attacked, we all reacted. I began casting Foul Vapors, and moved into position to damage as many enemy as I could. But those archers were good! Even in the darkness, they hit me a couple of times. Then more of the close-combat fighters arrived and surrounded us. If it wasn’t for Vralino taking the hit for me — several times — I’d be dead, again.

But we did prevail, killed the slavers and saved about half the slaves. Some had already been sent away via portal, and others were sent into the Foul Vapors on purpose. Even though I dispelled it, I wasn’t fast enough to save them all.

Juniper found more papers in Willow’s office. So I expect we’ll be tracking down more slavers before too long.

sigfriedmcwild
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Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: AAR: [8M] War Pigs (2021-03-11 @ 23:59 GMT)

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:51 pm

From the memoirs of Elisen of clan Adorjan, Haressa-tis and Lore Keeper

Another morning, another brunch, another one of Juniper's plans to stick it to the Man (I am not sure who this man is, or why it is important that they are capitalized, but Juniper insists). The Vralino squealing about being able to set themselves of fire was new though.

For the record that day I was sharing my midmorning meal with:
- Bloodbeat II of Syrtis, t'skrang Nethermancer and Weaponsmith
- Lazulin, troll Raider and Sun Herald
- Solanus Pyrocantha, elven Shadow and Questor of Lochost
- Vralino Hammershield, orc Swordmaster and Elementalist

After a few an all to brief digression into the benefits (salutary and otherwise) of setting one self on fire and the pros and cons of various ways of doing so, we got back to "sticking it to the Man". Specifically to how the notes we'd found in the Woldbuckle estate pointed to a name, Acufru, and a possible location, on the North bank of the Serpent near Wyrmwood.

Lazulin suggested we look into bounties from House Syrtis on slaver activity along the river, both as a mean to get more information and possibly greater rewards. Bloodbeat left to check and would later return with reports of an opportunistic group of slavers snapping up vulnerable targets in the area.

In the meantime we formulated a plan, which from the very beginning hinged on a massive flaw: we would have to go to Sosanopa. Obviously the moment we got there we would find a corpse and end up chasing another murder spree, passions, what is wrong with that town. The other refused to listen to reason however and insisted that pretending to be merchants would be a good way to attract the slaver's attention. In the end we settled on pretending Isidoros was carrying a dyreload of living crystal from Throal to Sosanopa and beyond.

As we travelled up the road, we attached ourselves to another merchant caravan while Juniper and I made repeated productions of "hiding" what our cargo was. I hope the folks along the way got a good laugh out of our antics at least.

We arrived to Sosanopa in a few uneventful days and, just as I predicted, the moment we crossed the gate a person was running down the street screaming about a murder. As it turns out in this case they were "just delusional" and the guard "took care of them". Suspicious...

But we were on a mission and could not afford to get sidetracked, we continued our charade all the way to the inn while someone was apparently keeping an eye on us from the alleys. At the inn we made another big production of how valuable our cargo was and how it would get even more so as we continued North. Some of the rumours attracted a local's attention who asked after some hermit alchemist.

The next day we crossed the river and continued North. Juniper struck by questor's fervor insisted we begin each day with some prayers to Lochost, which admittedly did strengthen my conviction in our cause. Soon enough a group of bandits "ambushed" us and were quickly taken down. The two that surrendered spilled the beans admitting they were hoping to use us as some form of donation to be allowed to join Acufru's group.

Armed with better directions we turned West towards the (decidedly unfriendly looking) woods and a couple of days later reached a fortified camp. Some lifesight later, Bloodbeat reported about twenty living namegivers, some of which were probably moving in and out of a portal in the middle of the camp. I immediately assumed it would be the questor from way back. More observation led us to believe that about half of the namegivers present were in fact slaves.

After about a day of casing the target we felt ready to attack. I would swoop in from the North and try to take out as many of the archers on the walls while the others would hit the South gate protected by surprise and friendly darkness. The ensuing fight went strangely to plan, with the slavers all too willing to clump up in the central tower where Bloodbeat could lock them in with some foul vapors.

Just before the end a gigantic troll dropped from one of the upper floors of the tower, only to be stunned by my battle shout and then cut down by Lazulin. At the same time the questor used the slaves as a shield wall to buy time for an escape and some died before Bloodbeat could dispell her own vapors.

As usual we found mountains of paperwork to pore over and what looked like several portals now deactivated.

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