"Spread out a bit on the bank, let's not all get caught again!"
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Lissa shudders, her eyes focused on Grum's back as they head through the woods, then finally she looks about. "I was freed. You can speak with the High Court if you wish. How else would I have left? A portal was opened." She answers the voice habitually, forming the fey words in her mind and letting them rest easily together in front of the larger picture. As she mentions the court, the image of the Norn Auri flashes through her mind.
The redoubt is known, so I'd be inclined to treat it as more of a supply dump than a secret base. We're going to need to scout the entire wood I think to find a reasonable hiding place. If the woods are similar to the current stuff, we're going to have an essentially endless number of potential encounters. Goals to work for are establishing a permanent camp, and moving people away from Phaendar. Since we haven't come across the former, let's spend today doing the latter. Getting further into the wood insulates us from hobgoblin patrols. How far can we travel with our full entourage and still have reasonable shelter tonight?
Level 2: +3 Skill Points (UMD, Spellcraft, Kn: Religion)
Also grabbing Benedict's old shield and using it to fight with the glaive for now. She's strong enough to carry around the tower shield in the interim, but using it has a pretty big penalty still. Updated profile.
"It might have a mate as well. Something to keep in mind when we go looking for it. As for tracking - birds rest in trees, and everything poops."
Sorry I was away this weekend for kiddo things. Back tommorrow to posting. Thanks for the bot.
"Damnit, someone catch her." Lissa follows Benedict, keeping to a steady pace.
I'm not giving you grief for it, I'm just noting that I'd rather minimize the AP NPCs where possible if we're embracing our gimmick. If we're going to let the NPCs be Bards/Clerics/et al, I'd rather let players do that.
The swarm of ooze vampire gremlins can wait I think. Anyways, I vote slay spy dude because I'd really rather not collect NPCs with class levels like it's pokemon. It's irritating/strains the gimmick enough that we have a pocket cleric but can't take cleric levels ourselves.
Lissa cleans her blade impassively. "We did, he turned out to be a liar and a spy. Bury him, say I. We don't have the people to keep watch on him and we cannot trust him. I'd let him go, except there's no way he's not headed right for either the Molthunians or the Legion. People are counting on us to keep them safe, not harbor criminals. A hard justice, but still just." She seems sad, but resolute.
Scent cloak to our scouts. I have UMD - going to pick up the following: Wand of CLW (21 charges)
Some of this she was already marked as carrying, I added L's to the loot list for the stuff she hadn't already picked up.
Lissa leaps forward swinging her glaive at the man, only to have him trip and pass harmlessly under the blade. To a casual observer, he dodged. A more careful observer would note the rope around his ankle.
"Lad, you chose the wrong side."
"Setting the woods on fire is probably not the right approach, that was a bad idea all together. We'd do better with smokers. Better still with some kind of poison. Acid would work, I suppose." She shakes her limbs, still stiff from the stings. Moving her hands along her sides she pulls the occasional dead wasp from between the fine plates of her armor.
"Ugh. Still a lot of daylight left, we should at least mark the area where the wasps are before we head back. It would be a shame if any searching hobgoblins thought this was our campsite. Mark a few trees leading in, will you?"
Lissa also retreats.
"Fire, good idea grum. All things fear fire." Suiting actions to words, Lissa pulls a torch from her bag and lights it, then waves it in the direction of the bugs.
She's not very frightening.
Noone is a combat healer because healing in combat is -terrible-. Out of combat, lissa is capable but not great yet.
Once they're out of sight and sound of the refugees, Lissa takes a moment to stop Benedict. "Not a word about this to our camp of refugees please. I don't want aubrin thinking I'm pretending to be more than I am, but I can lend you a bit of shelyn's healing for that wound if it's still bothering you."
As he nods, she lays one hand against his side, clutching the glaive tightly.
Yeah - we're going to have a lot of sick and then dead people if we don't get basic shelters set up, especially if we get spring rains, not to mention how hard it's going to be to have night time fire without giving our position away if we don't find some kind of cave or ravine with heavy thicket. Let's go east, setup our temporary shelters each night and look for someplace more defensible/hidden than 'it's the woods'. If this is anything like Kingmaker, we're going to have plenty of encounters in the wilderness anyways, and exploring the forest is our path forward to 'the next plot'. We can scout phaendar in a few days once we find somewhere to settle our followers that they aren't going to be instantly at risk to a wandering patrol of ~whatever-the-ap-has~ on it's random encounter chart.
I'd rather scout for a new camp than go look at phaendar. We need a secure shelter or we are in serious trouble if the weather changes (what time of year is it? Rain/Snow likely?) and should focus on moving forward instead of back. The most we're going to learn about phaendar is that they've started setting up fortifications and repairing the bridge. Unless they're magically doing this, it won't be very easy to judge progress after only 10 hours or so, and if they're doing it magically they're already done. Better to scout the bridge area later. Even if we saw something miraculous happening in phaendar itself, we wouldn't be able to get back over the ravine to do anything about it.
"Every time someone tells me they're a city boy they're a master woodsman. That you even know to say that is proof enough. Bed down and talk to me when you're willing to tell the truth. One thing though, these people are under our protection. So whatever truths you're hiding, think about them carefully. Otherwise, welcome to our little patch of hell in a jungle." Lissa seems supremely unconcerned about Taldan intrigue.
Lissa pulls her shield off her back and steps out into the clear to meet this new arrival. "Slow down idiot you'll crash into something." She doesn't speak loudly, but she does speak clearly, trusting her friends to cover her if it turns out to be trouble.
"Our first priority has to be finding a safe place to settle our refugees, or a way to evacuate. If we're going to resist, we'll need a place to return to, and that means something we can secure against a larger force. Everyone's heard stories of the Fangwood, but did anyone hear stories of another holdout? A cave? I don't think we can make it to the redoubt and back in just a day, and I wouldn't want to leave our merry band of townfolk alone in the woods."
"Ah, alchemy. A fitting tribute to our departed friend. We'll be back, Phaendarans, but for now. Hello to Fangwood, our new home."
Unless there is a clear change in what's going on, Lissa is going to keep heading into the woods looking for a reasonable place to shelter the refugees long enough to establish a marching order, then she's going to suggest marching for at least an hour into the depths of the forest. Even with the bridge down, being this close to the incursion is -bad times-. I think we'll want to ask any questions we have about establishing our mini-kingmaker camp here instead of gameplay to avoid cluttering the narrative of the ~escape~ up with rules stuff, but my guess as to the next scene in gameplay after ~escape~ is going to be one of those rough camps - either the first to establish marching order and destination in the woods because one of our NPCs happens to know of a conveniently defendable cave structure/bramble, or the second (after we've marched away from town for a bit) to figure out how to make the best of whatever we found. I'm not clear on what the current plot point is, beyond, flee you fools! So if I've missed some macguffin or forgotten it, remind me please.
Lissa continues to lead the refugees towards the forest, her eyes open for any trouble ahead of them.
"Hurry as you can, it's not going to get any better back there, ideally, Jie will have some luck making it noticably worse for the hobs. We'll need to be well into the fangwood if we're to find safety tonight."
Lissa moves towards the edge of the forest, looking for a clear path of escape.
"This way."
Yeah we all had a great time, just busy busy busy - toddler birthdays are great.
Lissa moves forward, and jabs her glaive in a surprisingly fast strike at the hob's side, sinking it home. "Across the bridge everyone. We need to move. Drag the body with us!"
Thanks for the bot - daughter and nephew both had birthdays this week and I didn't check the board between all the fuss. I'm back now.
Sounds like we need to get Kinning to the right place starting ASAP and get our followers across the bridge to the woods. We are on the wrong side and we have 10 rounds. Don't stay to play archery games, get the charges set and rush the hob so our followers can get across while we take care of any AoO.
Lissa's shot falls short, and she drops the bow, reading her glaive. "Go Grum"
"Carry all of this. We'll worry about which ones are worthwhile when we're in the woods. Worst case it's a useful bottle."
Lissa searches the room, pocketing the letters, and stowing the lab in a sack for later. She eyes the cabinet. "Move quickly, take anything we might use, but move. Anyone have a key to his medicine cabinet? If not, break the lock. No reason to leave bandages for the hobs."
Feel free to retcon that to jabbing with glaive if the javelin is obviously unusable. Lissa dice karma continues.
Lissa chucks the javelin at the hob, with surprising accuracy.
"Now then, let's get our flock out of here"
"Get rid of the hob and search this place. We need to go."
Lissa moves towards the downed man, trying to remove the javelin without doing any additional damage. She lightly touches him, and his wounds slow their bleeding. Actions: Move to wounded man Standard to SLA-Stabilize
"Grum's right. We need to get going. That said we have enough people we can carry the wounded. Search the building quickly, then make for the bridge and the woods."
"Let's go then." Lissa heads toward the door, her glaive at the ready, waiting to follow.
Quarterbacking is the worst.
Lissa is either glaive or shield/kunai. This.
We're going to need the food, the animals are already dead, so I say go ahead.
Lissa follows Grum into the smithy, her glaive at the ready.
Lissa steps forward, striking at the hob line again.
Actions:
Move - to the line Standard - Glaive the hob Lissa moves forward, her glaive catching the hob unexpectedly from the side. "Finish this fast, we'll need to deal with that fire."
dice purgatory:
Lissa looks at the hob, and the axe, then buries it in the hobs chest and walks out. "A fine fighter, to stand so long against three. We must make haste, and I pray that we not meet many more like her. Aubrin if you want any of the sacrament, you'll have to take it yourself. I wasn't inducted just yet, so I have no idea what would be valuable to a priest and I see no sign of a healer's apothecary." Lissa moves onward, smiling grimly as she notes the additions to their group. More saved, but how many already lost.
We need a name for this hob scout that is inigo montoyaing us.
Actions/Dice:
Move Closer Standard "Hobs and axes and no time to teach them respect for a shrine. We need to clear this filth out quickly." |