Kingmaker: Stolen Land, Session 2

Eagle to the face!

At the end of our first session, the group had planned to poison the alcohol that the bandits were going to steal from Oleg’s, and follow them back to their base. Then hopefully they could hit the brigands while they were drowsy from the effects of the spiked wine. When we started off our first full session, Satampra’s player threw a wrench into the works by insisting that he wanted to be in the trading post when the bandits arrived, posing as a humble trapper, or something. The others tried to dissuade him, to no effect, and so he borrowed some clothing from Oleg’s stores to dress the part and awaited the bandits in the guesthouse. Travaris, the cleric, joined him in the guesthouse but elected to remain hidden. He just wanted to be able to see the bandits, presumably so he could ID them later.

The bandits arrived at dawn, hooting and jeering at Oleg and Svetlana. Originally I had planned for an altercation to erupt between Oleg and the bandits, in order to tempt the hiding players to ditch their plan and come to Oleg’s aid. Instead, Satampra fouled things up very nicely on his own. While the bandits were loading their horses with Oleg’s goods, he came strolling out of the guesthouse, hot cup of coffee in hand, and asked everyone what was going on here. Happs Bydon, the bandit’s field leader, ordered one of his men to relieve this unexpected guest of his belongings. Satampra, shocked that a bandit would try to actually rob him, drew his sword, and a fight erupted.

This proved to be a problem for the others, since the rest of the group was hiding behind the trading post and, aside from the halfling, couldn’t climb the walls to save their (or anyone else’s) life. Satampra was quickly cut down by a hail of arrows. Salar the halfling ranger made it over the wall on his first try, while Halas the inquisitor struggled for several rounds to scale it. The druid and wizard looked at their Climb penalties and spent 3-4 rounds running around the walls to the front gate. Travaris mostly hid out in the guesthouse, peering through the slats. In the end, most of the bandits got away, minus their haul and some horses, Oleg and Svetlana narrowly avoided getting killed, and Satampra had all of his coin stolen while he lay dying.

Afterwards, Satampra was asked why he drew his blade. “He was going to rob me!” he protested. The others, exasperated, explained, “That’s what bandits do!” Apparently he believed that the thieves would realize that if they robbed the suppliers that restocked the trading post, there wouldn’t be anything to steal from the trading post, and thus leave him alone. I think that he was, perhaps, giving the brigands of the Greenbelt a little too much credit.

After the situation had calmed down, the party immediately started worrying about a counter-attack, and spent 4 days coming up with all sorts of ways to fortify the trading post. They also had a captive bandit, Eagle-Face Dan (previously “Dagger” Dan, but he got his face torn up by a summoned eagle during the fight), but weren’t too interested in what he had to say. I should have interrupted the orgy of planning that followed with the arrival of Kesten Garess, a NPC who was there to guard the trading post so that the PCs could run off on adventures. But I had momentarily forgotten about the adventure’s timeline. When Kesten and his soldiers did finally show up on day 4, the group realized they could now get proactive in hunting down the bandits. They negotiated a deal with Eagle-Face Dan wherein he would lead them to the camp in exchange for his freedom, and set out into the wild.

While the group was now all mounted (they scored 4 horses off the bandits), it was still slow going. The halfling started play with a pony, and the cleric with a mule, and one of the horses had to carry 2 riders because of Dan. So they camped out in the forest known as the Narlmarches at the end of their first day of travel, and suffered the first of many pranks at the hands of some faeries (a faerie dragon and a grig). After some Knowledge checks, they had Satampra offer Travaris’ private cask of ale to the faeries (the rogue had the only decent Diplomacy bonus), which successfully placated the tricksters. The group thinks for good; but in reality the pair just won’t prank Satampra anymore. The rest of the party is fair game. Heh!

On the next day, they arrived at the bandit camp and scouted it out. They spotted 2 hidden watch posts and the men in them, counted up 10 more unnamed bandits, and took note of Happs and the camp’s leader, a woman named Kressle. The adventure only calls for 8 bandits if they’ve been alerted, but I’m using Alexander Kilcoyne’s 6-player conversion which has beefed up the numbers. The players were unsure how they will tackle that many bandits, but they were leaning towards trying to poison them again. What they didn’t realize is that there are more bandits in the woods – patrols and whatnot – so if they don’t make a move soon they may run into trouble.

Next: trouble!