And who were they? I'm pondering how to run Helva currently. I have some amusing ideas that will increase her survivability.
My group left the thralls alive and even took them with them, but none of the vikings.
They also stole the wool in the backroom as well. As well as a horse cart to carry it all.
Of course one of the Thralls (the one they talked with the most) later turned up swimming face down in the river, as per Fatal Warning event.
Um, several female thralls, indeed. Some of which the actual guards were getting busy with at the time of the feast, so I'm not sure how they could possibly count as "warriors".
My group left everyone alive. I actually have to give them credit for going out of their way to avoid the fighting and killing entirely. I think they were a bit leery after Ukshakka's tale and with the approaching reinforcements. They sent the rogue to go sneak around the back, and she spent some time talking quietly to one of the thralls working in the kitchen, offered her an escape in exchange for answering some questions. After a time, the rest of the group entered the front door posing as the hired performers. They did a pretty good job, enough to entertain a bunch of drunks. When things got a little rowdy, Asvig and Helga came out and confronted the "entertainers" -- they definitely didn't order any such thing. During that commotion, the rogue managed to slip into the bedroom for a quick search, and went out the back (taking her friend from the kitchen) as the rest of the party was being thrown out the front door. There was a lot of angry yelling and threats on the front lawn, but it didn't actually come to blows.
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Oh, THOSE thralls... yeah we let those go.
We might have let the warriors live, too, had it not been for the fact that:
I think my players left some thralls alive. Mostly because they were non-combatants and out of the way.
Everyone other foe died quickly. I can always say they were too drunk to fight properly. Sounds better than:"My dice hate me!"
Hmmm, maybe my GM tweaked the encounter.
Everyone that we met at the farm attacked us, we slaughtered them to the last man, looted the house, then burned it to the ground.
Our party is predominantly lawful good.
They spared the thralls...killed the rest...then burned the hall/farmhouse to the ground with the bodies inside.
Yup, they were like Charlie...in total revenge mode!
There'd been a lot of killing in this module already, so we let many of the warriors live--but they ran screaming into the night and may have been eaten by snow leopards. We didn't inquire.
We meant to save Helva, but when she started casting--we hadn't known she was a caster--she got a lethally sharp response from frightened PCs.
Alvig, alas, got our party's standard treatment for people oath-bound not to talk under questioning. We cast Detect Thoughts and questioned him until he realized what was happening, whereupon the curse killed him messily. I admit that my character Jinko, the party advocate of "we have to kill them, we can't keep them or let them go" sometimes connives to make sure this happens, rather than a fully successful questioning session that leaves the prisoner alive. (The ancestral spirits told Jinko that her role is to do the awful things Ameiko's honor won't let her do, and she took that to heart.)
The PCs' opinion of that curse was conditioned by the fact that the first time they met it they assumed it had been imposed by force on unwilling people. They carefully preserved the prisoners' lives (after the first one exploded) and paid a huge sum to the high priest of Torag to break the curse. Then they found out it was done willingly, and after that they weren't nearly so compassionate.
They still didn't kill those prisoners, though. They kept them at great risk and expensive, arguing constantly about what to do with them, until one night Jinko slipped into the wagon and killed them all. I think the other player knows this, but the other PCs haven't caught on. On the other hand, there's a definite pattern of Jinko doing awful-but-necessary things and waiting for Koichi or Ameiko or Spivey to protest--and the protests never come. Power corrupts....