Filler - Part 2

March 20, 2007

After the fight with the wyvern, the group continues traveling. Duece is up front scouting. If he finds something interesting, he gets off his pony and leaves it for the others to find while he follows whatever it is he finds. Usually it is nothing and he catches up with the group, or they with him, no problem. After almost a full day of traveling, he finds some tracks and follows them north.

Duece doesn't see the signs and falls into the pit trap. The bottom is filled with rusty swords and bits of armor, jammed into the ground and sticking up. He twists so he doesn't hit those but still lands hard. Duece hears the voices and ducks to a corner when two glass vials come into the pit and break, filling the pit with a gas. Duece loses conscienceness.

The group catch up to Duece's pony and Victor grabs the reins and they keep going. After a few minutes, they think it strange they haven't caught up to Duece, so start talking about it and looking around. Reece thinks he sees something to the north and as he says it, two men jump up and start running, one to the west and one to the north. Julia, Reece and Eric spur their horses and give chase, thinking to catch the men on foot quickly.

Julia and Eric's horses hit the pit traps and fall. Julia's is killed instantly from the fall. Eric's horse is hurt and struggling. Eric shrugs his shoulders and kills it before grabbing his stuff and heading back to the others. Meanwhile, Reece manages to chase down one of the men and tie him up. Julia, who followed him and saw it, motions for him to chase the other while she takes of the down man. Reece takes off after the other one. He slams into him with his horse, about ten feet from the edge of the gorge. Unfortunately, the guy can only think to get away and runs straight off the gorge.

They question the man they found and he doesn't say much until Reeces uses magic to charm him and make him think he is helping. They learn there is a leader and a mage, where the camp is and that a raiding party left this morning, taking many with them. After learning all of it, Reece mind shatters the man and they leave him in one of the pits.

They find the camp easily. There are obviously two parts to it. The upper camp has two buildings for supplies and six men guarding it. They also see the ladder that goes down into the gorge. They come up with a good plan for distracting the men, with an illusion by Duece, and then attacking on several fronts.

Unfortunately, one of the men spots Duece and they all attack him. It provides the distraction they wanted but Duece isn't happy about it. However, the group helps save him and manages to take out the bandits. They get rid of the bodies by throwing them into the gorge. They turn their minds to the cave below.

Duece uses his Shadow magic to see what the place looks like and they know how many and where they are positioned. That's when the planning starts.

Notes

• We didn't get through very much. Two guys were late and by the time we got started, we only had two hours. It was fun, don't get me wrong. We just didn't have tons of time.
• I made the one bandit, that they charmed, unlikable. I didn't want the PCs or NPCs helping the PCs to have problems with killing him or doing whatever. He was a bad man.
• The ambush was kinda funny. They did have a good plan for an ambush by having a distraction that was believable. Unfortunately, Duece was spotted and got to be the distraction, exactly what he didn't want. It worked, though, and he wasn't even hit that hard.
• We ended because we were close to quitting time and realized the battle and planning could take a while. We figured it was best to do it next week.