—Winter is fast approaching, Berick needs work and lodging, and experience. I want to be third level before he tries the caves, and he’ll need allies by then, like Adwin.
22nd Day of Sowing-8 gp (21 gp Adwin), 20 rations
It is market day in the keep’s main square. Farmers and merchants alike are selling their wares, freshly salted pork by the barrel, sacks of grain. Merchants are loading their carts with farm goods, and the farmers themselves are buying cloth, and other goods from the cities of the west. The aroma of incense from one stand, the stench of cattle and hogs from the pens, and the all pervasive smell of sweat hang heavy in the air, in spite of the jubilant mood.
I mingle with the crowd, keeping my ears open, and asking about lodging for the winter, work, and any chance to earn my keep as a guard, or even as a laborer at this point. Then I notice Adwin watching one of the town guards tacking up a wanted notice. “Balil the Half Orc”, the poster reads, Adwin rips it down and shows it to me. “See here! This is the man who attacked you! There is a bounty on his head, now. We could track him down and you could avenge your honor.” He laughs. I snatch the poster from his hand, looking it over. 250 gold coins! (minimum bounty for a murderer in a prior campaign). in addition to his assault against me, it turns out he is believed to have murdered a dwarven merchant named Hangrid Goldtooth when he and his gang of bandits ambushed the caravan last night.
I quickly chase after the town guard and ask about the attack, Adwin follows close on my heels. The guard leads me to the Captain of the Watch, who fills me in on the details. The gang ambushed the caravan on the road about two miles west of the keep. Nearly within sight of the keep’s towers, and when men often start to let their guard down. In addition to the half orc, there were at least five other men with him, and they all had horses.
I ask Adwin if he has a horse, but he shrugs his shoulders and says, “No, I haven’t earned my spurs yet it would seem.” I shake my head, “Well, perhaps they’ll be easier to track”.
I start asking around to see if there might be a tracker about, and though I have no luck, I do find three other young men who are interested in the bounty, asking if I might want to hire their help. They seem eager enough, but have little gear, and I have no money. We ask Bumbo, and also at the Traveler’s Guild if anyone will sponsor or loan us equipment, but even the money lender considers us to high a risk. But amazingly, two of the men agree to come with Adwin and I for a 50% split of the bounty, provided we can feed them. Well, we have food enough for a few days, so we strike that deal. They’ll tag along for two days, and if we haven’t found the gang by then, they will give up (DC 20 persuasion roll vs each, I got lucky!) I persuade Adwin to loan one of the men his crossbow, as I do for the other, so they can support us from a distance while we rely on our armor and steel close up.
We then set off to the site of the skirmish. Hoping to find traces of which way the bandits might have fled. Along the way, I hear Adwin cry out, “My ring! I’ve lost my signet ring!” I don’t recall having seen it on his hand earlier, but he is convince he had it in the tavern. He also wants us to go back and look for it, but I warn that trails grow cold fast, and any clues we might find will be lost with the rain or a bit of snow.
He shakes his head, “That ring is everything! If I can’t even keep possession of a simple ring, I can’t be trusted with anything!” And the young squire starts heading back to town. The hired men are wavering. Four versus six is one thing, three versus six is even worse!
I protest, “If the ring was stolen, you’ll not find it without help any time soon. And if you simply mislaid it, it is likely in your room and will remain safely there till we return. Her is your chance for glory. We follow the opportunity at hand, and if we live, I’ll help you find your ring. If not, it won’t matter anyway.’ Adwin hangs his head in defeat, and then returns to my side.
We easily find the sight of the battle, and signs of where the horsed raiders fled the site with their plunder. There is also signs of some of the keep’s soldier’s following that trail, the hard boots of the patrol leaving a distinct impression in the soil. I tell my company to follow, and we begin to track the bandits and soldiers.
We follow the tracks southeast towards the swamplands, home of the flesh ripping lizardfolk the Corporal warned us about. The hired men talk nervously about stories they’ve heard of lizardfolk savagery. I tell them to hush, lest they feed one anothers fear and break their won morale.
After an hour more of tracking, we find the headless corpses of two men. Rough looking fellows from the looks of things. Bandits we’d guess. “Looks like the patrol caught up to a couple of them anyway.” There are also signs that the bandits split up after this fight. Two horses heading back to the west, and two farther east. The patrol. The patrol pursued the western party, so that leaves us heading directly into the swamp after the other two! The patrol captain prudently chose to keep his unit together and not risk the dangers of the swamp.
Unlike the cool breeze we felt in the grasslands, the air in this swamp is stale and oppressive. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, as we begin pushing forward into the marshlands. The horses leave deep prints in the mud, making them easy to follow in spite of the waning light. A more clever adversary might run the animals through deep water, leaving no tracks at all! Or perhaps, they seek to lead pursuers into a trap.
As we push our way through the swamp, I have this sudden sense of foreboding, and I tell everyone to lay low for a bit. Then we hear the droning sound, like the flies that buzz around our ears in this place, but louder and drawing closer. One of the men points to the air, “Look!”, and his companion raises his crossbow as we see two huge flies coming our way. There seems to be someone riding them, goblins perhaps?
We huddle down as the flies approach, and one of the goblins, some sort of frog man, hurls a heavy stone at Adwin, which bounces off the squire’s shield. Our men open fire with their crossbows, wounding that first one. The second fly swings by, dropping another stone off to my side, while the first one hovered overhead, dropping another stone onto Adwin’s shield, staggering the man.
But it stayed in place two long, and our men put two more crossbow bolts into the rider, who tumbled from his saddle. The second flier then took off to the east, while the first giant fly came in low to avenge its master! It dives down and latches onto Ernard, it’s sucker plunging into his chest, and he screams for only a moment as his blood is drained and his skin grows pale. Adwin, Colver, and I lay into the fly with our blades, but Ernard is already dead before we cut down the beast.
“Sorry about your friend,” I say to Colvor, as we examine Ernard’s corpse.
“Meh, the guy was a jackass, owed me money, cheated on my sister, got what he deserved. We only worked together so I could make sure he was paying me back from any wages he made,” the man snorts derisively. “my sister wanted me to do him in after what he did to her, she’ll be glad of his fate.”
Adwin and I look at each other. Adwin laughs, “Well, what do you expect from sellswords!” Colvor looks at us, “Like you’d shed a tear for your servants, or you for a fellow soldier. It comes with the territory.”
I recover the man’s weapons and suggest that we get moving, before we lose anymore light.
Colvor smirks a bit, and says, “Perhaps, we don’t need to travel much further at all!” and raises his bow, letting loose a bolt at some unseen target. I look, and seeing the half orc, and another man, take aim at the man who nearly killed me.
Adwin starts racing forward, and I follow in close pursuit, while the bandits return fire, unwilling to abandon their horses laden with loot, and apparently bogged down in the muck. We’d have undoubtedly seen them sooner had we not been attacked by the giant flies and frogmen! Colvor’s second shot kills the unknown bandit, but Balil is already on Adwin before I reach them. Fortunately, the man is no match for the two of us, and when Colvor comes to our aid, we quickly overwhelm the villain.
We then look to the men’s horses, and see they are both floundering in some sort of quicksand. Adwin and I start trying to coax the animals out, so we can place the fallen on them.
The animals are frightened, and nearly hopelessly stuck. It takes a lot of work, but eventually we get them out of the mire. We then lash Ernard, Balil, and the other man’s bodies to their saddles, along with the other loot the bandits had taken during their raid. We then start making our way back towards the keep, eager to get out of the swamp before the night grows any longer.
—Scene #9 (Positive Alteration): We report to the Castellan to collect our bounty, and learn that both men we took are known criminals
29th Day of Sowing-6 gp (17 gp Adwin), 16 rations
We arrive at the gates long after they are closed, but we call out to the watch captain that we’ve taken Balil, and have two other dead with us. The watch captain, ever diligent calls down to us, “Pitch your tent where you are then, the gate is sealed until dawn!”
“You’d have us sleep alongside dead men?” I call up to the guard. He shouts back that it’s better than taking a flogging for breaking curfew.
So we roll out our bedding, and I let Adwin and Culver get some rest while I stand watch. I look over the animals, a couple of sturdy draft horses that have seen their best years long ago. Perhaps we’ll be able to claim them with the bounty if they are not known to be stolen.
Eventually, we are let inside, where the Lord’s Steward and the Captain examine the corpses of the bandits. “Balil the Half Orc, and also Kael Donriver. Good work! 300 gold crowns are your due.” Adwin, Colvor and I are glad to hear this news, but then I ask about the horses, “No idea who those might have belonged to. Nobody has told us of any stolen livestock. Balil’s gang must have brought them along when they came out here. Keep them, sell them, it’s up to you. They are in the stables if you want to claim them, or sell them”
“Well then, let’s head over to the inn and split up our bounty!” I suggest. At the inn, we give Colvor his 75 gold crowns, a quarter share, and set aside another quarter for Ernard’s next of kin. Adwin and I also take 75 crowns each, and our crossbows back. i then collapse onto a cot in the common room, while Adwin returns to his private lodge, where, as I suggested, he finds his lost ring.
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