Session 26 – Is the Wine Really Necessary?
Campaign I, session 26. Previous: Session 25.
SESSION 26 – Is the Wine Really Necessary?
The party spends the early part of the session prepping for travel into the Shadowmount Forest; making sure they have enough feed for the animals, sufficient winter clothing, and so forth. They pay some of the local Orien trailblazers for recent info and rumors about the forest. The group also takes a small care package from the main Cathedral of the Flame to the shrine in the forest. With a packed cart, the trip to the shrine will take about 5 days.
On day 3, towards the end of the day, the party passes through the village of Blackbriar. The common folk reek of fear, refusing to make eye contact and slipping out of sight as soon as possible. Pash can sense dread in their body language. The party passes a few patrols of archers that seem to be wearing gang signs of some kind, and Dreyfuss and Alwyn can tell that they have some stealth and ambush training. The fourth such patrol approaches the group and, in a vaguely eastern-european accent, the patrol leader asks them if they have “payed their toll for passage through the village.”
Pash turns on the charm and begins talking about how she definitely wants to ensure a mutually beneficial arrangement with all comers. As soon as she’s identified as the party’s face, this guy starts leering and hinting at the “alternative payments” she might provide, in all the worst possible ways. Pash asks if they might find a room at a local inn to get a glass of wine and stay the night, and the guy’s like “all the inns here charge by the hour, and is the wine really necessary here?”
With Dreyfuss playing dumb escort doggo, Pash pulls him into the back of their cart and directs Hugo to drive it behind a nearby building. As the guy starts getting ready for his big moment, he’s like “uh, perhaps the dog does not need to watch?” at which point Pash activates her art of treachery, signaling the time to strike (with a massive initiative boost on the first round). Dreyfuss lets out a loud bark as he attacks, which, along with Pash’s false shouts of ecstasy cover the man’s gurgling death cries.
The next round, Dreyfuss tears around the corner and attacks some of the other archers from behind. Several additional archers reveal themselves on nearby rooftops. The bandits call for additional backup but are cut down in relatively short order. Unfortunately, Renard (the changeling) catches an arrow to the throat after calling on the locals to “rise up against your oppressors!”. While he is stabilized in short order, he will need 4 weeks of bed rest and now breathes through a flap of skin on his throat.
After the fight, the party is wary of potential reinforcements and turns back to see if the backup call would be answered. It seems the other bandit patrols have decided to lay low and sit this one out. So, Pash knocks on one of the doors and attempting to follow up on Renard’s call for an uprising. The locals are willing to help by giving an crude map of the Villa these bandits had seized, they were unwilling to risk life and limb in this moment.
With a bit of strategizing, the party was able to storm the villa and take out the bandit leadership with no additional casualties. When the dust settles, they now have some choices to make about what to do with the stolen loot found within.