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D&D report...
Duly cut to prevent the terminally uninterested...
Well, last time, we had ended up at a kind of wagon rest stop, and avoided a minor scuffle with other caravan guards...
Anyway, last night's session started out with most of the party asleep (taking turns to go on watch. I was taking the early morning watch shift, as I'd been "busy" robbing a tax collector the night before. Anyway, towards the end of my watch, a guard of some sort comes riding in from the direction we'd come from. He was wounded quite badly, and his horse was looking a bit worse for wear. Being the civic-minded type, I went over to help him, just as he fell off the horse. Quickly enquiring about what had happened, I discovered that he'd been attacked by bandits. Now, remembering that I knew we were carrying stolen goods, and that there'd already been one attempt by the previous owner to take the goods in question back (in which my friend and I had helped both sides after being paid off), I was naturally concerned, especially since bandits weren't all that common so close to the city. Having found out the important information, I handed the wounded man over to the other guard who'd come to investigate, and, once out of view of the other guards, I went through the horses saddlebags with a fine tooth comb, finding a fairly reasonable sum of gold, and a crsyal on a pedestal, which was probably magical, in my estimation. So I stole it as well. I then encouraged the horse to go over to the other side of the camp, and woke up our caravan leader, suggesting we might want to get a move on due to the bandits. Obviously, I didn't mention the secondary reason, that I figured the rider would look for his stuff sooner or later...
Half an hour later, as we were preparing to leave, I saw a commotion over at the side of the camp where the horse was, and decided I'd better volunteer for outrider duty again, thus getting me out of the camp before anyone remmembered that I'd been in the area. Fortunately, most people were tired, and my little misdirection with the horse kept them occupied long enough.
We proceeded on our way to the next settlement, with me heading back to the caravan every so often to check in, but spending most of my time out in front. It was while I was fairly close to returning to the caravan that one of the other party members spotted the dust cloud of a group of riders following us at high speed and gaining. Working on the principle that they probably weren't friendly, the caravan driver disconnected the 3 rear wagons, and set the front caravan to going as fast as possible. Seeing this, I positioned myself appropriately, and with grace and style, grabbed and pulled myself onto the now-speeding wagon easily. We then positioned ourselves for combat- the paladin on the front seat next to the driver with his longbow, my friend the warrior on top with his heavy crossbow, and me with my shortbow inside the wagon with my head poking up occasionally through the hatch, ready to surprise someone who got too close.
Anyway, it turned out that we were right, and they were hostile. The group chasing us consisted of 5 men on horseback with armour and swords, and, further back, two two-man chariots, with an archer/swordsman and a driver.
To begin with, the paladin started firing at horses, and managed to slow one of them down somewhat, whilst![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dainul on the roof was shockingly inaccurate with his attempts to hit any of the approaching riders. Shortly after this, two of the riders had got within my range, and so I opened fire on one of them, hitting, and wounding quite badly, one of the two. He pulled back somewhat, and the other one proceeded forwards a little more. After another round of inconclusive combat, the closest rider managed to leap and catch the wagon with his hands, at which point dainul switched to sword and shield, but failed to hit him and make him lose his grip. Next came my first noticable failure- I dropped into the wagon, opened the back door, drew and stuck one of my short swords into a vital area. Except that my sword glanced off his armour. So I shut the door again.
Unfortunately, he decided to boot the door in, draw his sword, and cause me some grief. So, in good old fantasy style, I "saw him and raised", drawing the second of my paired short swords, and proved that, just because I prefered to attack from surprise, didn't mean I couldn't hold my own in a straight fight. A couple of seconds later, his corpse was booted back out of the wagon, and I resumed sniping, this time from inside the back, taking another bandit out of the fight, although he wasn't quite dead. By this point, the fire from the paladin had reduced our attackers even further, until there was only one rider remaining, and the two chariots further back.
At this point, one of the horses on our wagon gave out, and the wagon ground to a halt. The paladin anddainul got round to the back, and proceeded to, in quite short order, disable the remaining rider. The paladin the promptly turned around and healed the rider to prevent him bleeding to death. Most irritating.
At this point, our fourth player,draxar, playing an elven barbarian ex-pit-fighter escaped slave, leapt from the woods onto the rearmost chariot, and proceeded to disable it before leaping off again, and facing off against the driver, who managed to survive the ensuing crash.
Meanwhile, the other archer had actually managed to hit me (didn't hurt that much, but it's the principle of the thing). So, from the wagon came the shout, "Kill him a lot!!!". Upon whichdainul moved to a postion near the edge of the road, that would take the chariot past him, and proeeded to near-disembowel one of the chariot horses. A small crash later, and there was a dead driver, and a barely conscious archer lying at his feet. A few seconds after that, and said archer was beheaded, leaving only the unarmed driver of the other chariot, who, thanks to terrible dice rolling by draxar, was still relatively fine.
While this was going on, I took the opportunity to kill and loot all the wounded bandits, while the paladin was otherwise occupied. I then pocketed the money I found (for later division withdainul, and left the weapons in a pile by the caravan (there weren't any I wanted, so I thought I might as well build goodwill.
draxar eventually beat the rider, and, after some short discussion, was accepted into the group "at least as far as the next town" as thanks for his help. Now we had more horses, we decided to go back and retrieve the other three wagons. While the caravan driver, and the other players were fixing up the front wagon, dainul and I headed back to the other wagons to "guard" them. We looked and saw that the bandits had had a quick look, but not actually taken anything, a story that was quickly revised to "they grabbed a bit of gold". And the possibly magical ring that I stashed for later examination. Damn those bandits.
The session ended with us arriving safely at the next town...
Well, last time, we had ended up at a kind of wagon rest stop, and avoided a minor scuffle with other caravan guards...
Anyway, last night's session started out with most of the party asleep (taking turns to go on watch. I was taking the early morning watch shift, as I'd been "busy" robbing a tax collector the night before. Anyway, towards the end of my watch, a guard of some sort comes riding in from the direction we'd come from. He was wounded quite badly, and his horse was looking a bit worse for wear. Being the civic-minded type, I went over to help him, just as he fell off the horse. Quickly enquiring about what had happened, I discovered that he'd been attacked by bandits. Now, remembering that I knew we were carrying stolen goods, and that there'd already been one attempt by the previous owner to take the goods in question back (in which my friend and I had helped both sides after being paid off), I was naturally concerned, especially since bandits weren't all that common so close to the city. Having found out the important information, I handed the wounded man over to the other guard who'd come to investigate, and, once out of view of the other guards, I went through the horses saddlebags with a fine tooth comb, finding a fairly reasonable sum of gold, and a crsyal on a pedestal, which was probably magical, in my estimation. So I stole it as well. I then encouraged the horse to go over to the other side of the camp, and woke up our caravan leader, suggesting we might want to get a move on due to the bandits. Obviously, I didn't mention the secondary reason, that I figured the rider would look for his stuff sooner or later...
Half an hour later, as we were preparing to leave, I saw a commotion over at the side of the camp where the horse was, and decided I'd better volunteer for outrider duty again, thus getting me out of the camp before anyone remmembered that I'd been in the area. Fortunately, most people were tired, and my little misdirection with the horse kept them occupied long enough.
We proceeded on our way to the next settlement, with me heading back to the caravan every so often to check in, but spending most of my time out in front. It was while I was fairly close to returning to the caravan that one of the other party members spotted the dust cloud of a group of riders following us at high speed and gaining. Working on the principle that they probably weren't friendly, the caravan driver disconnected the 3 rear wagons, and set the front caravan to going as fast as possible. Seeing this, I positioned myself appropriately, and with grace and style, grabbed and pulled myself onto the now-speeding wagon easily. We then positioned ourselves for combat- the paladin on the front seat next to the driver with his longbow, my friend the warrior on top with his heavy crossbow, and me with my shortbow inside the wagon with my head poking up occasionally through the hatch, ready to surprise someone who got too close.
Anyway, it turned out that we were right, and they were hostile. The group chasing us consisted of 5 men on horseback with armour and swords, and, further back, two two-man chariots, with an archer/swordsman and a driver.
To begin with, the paladin started firing at horses, and managed to slow one of them down somewhat, whilst
dainul on the roof was shockingly inaccurate with his attempts to hit any of the approaching riders. Shortly after this, two of the riders had got within my range, and so I opened fire on one of them, hitting, and wounding quite badly, one of the two. He pulled back somewhat, and the other one proceeded forwards a little more. After another round of inconclusive combat, the closest rider managed to leap and catch the wagon with his hands, at which point dainul switched to sword and shield, but failed to hit him and make him lose his grip. Next came my first noticable failure- I dropped into the wagon, opened the back door, drew and stuck one of my short swords into a vital area. Except that my sword glanced off his armour. So I shut the door again.Unfortunately, he decided to boot the door in, draw his sword, and cause me some grief. So, in good old fantasy style, I "saw him and raised", drawing the second of my paired short swords, and proved that, just because I prefered to attack from surprise, didn't mean I couldn't hold my own in a straight fight. A couple of seconds later, his corpse was booted back out of the wagon, and I resumed sniping, this time from inside the back, taking another bandit out of the fight, although he wasn't quite dead. By this point, the fire from the paladin had reduced our attackers even further, until there was only one rider remaining, and the two chariots further back.
At this point, one of the horses on our wagon gave out, and the wagon ground to a halt. The paladin and
dainul got round to the back, and proceeded to, in quite short order, disable the remaining rider. The paladin the promptly turned around and healed the rider to prevent him bleeding to death. Most irritating.At this point, our fourth player,
draxar, playing an elven barbarian ex-pit-fighter escaped slave, leapt from the woods onto the rearmost chariot, and proceeded to disable it before leaping off again, and facing off against the driver, who managed to survive the ensuing crash.Meanwhile, the other archer had actually managed to hit me (didn't hurt that much, but it's the principle of the thing). So, from the wagon came the shout, "Kill him a lot!!!". Upon which
dainul moved to a postion near the edge of the road, that would take the chariot past him, and proeeded to near-disembowel one of the chariot horses. A small crash later, and there was a dead driver, and a barely conscious archer lying at his feet. A few seconds after that, and said archer was beheaded, leaving only the unarmed driver of the other chariot, who, thanks to terrible dice rolling by draxar, was still relatively fine. While this was going on, I took the opportunity to kill and loot all the wounded bandits, while the paladin was otherwise occupied. I then pocketed the money I found (for later division with
dainul, and left the weapons in a pile by the caravan (there weren't any I wanted, so I thought I might as well build goodwill.draxar eventually beat the rider, and, after some short discussion, was accepted into the group "at least as far as the next town" as thanks for his help. Now we had more horses, we decided to go back and retrieve the other three wagons. While the caravan driver, and the other players were fixing up the front wagon, dainul and I headed back to the other wagons to "guard" them. We looked and saw that the bandits had had a quick look, but not actually taken anything, a story that was quickly revised to "they grabbed a bit of gold". And the possibly magical ring that I stashed for later examination. Damn those bandits.The session ended with us arriving safely at the next town...