Session 34 - Deep into the Barony
12 Klarmont 1010 - 13 Klarmont 1010
General Summary
The party finishes setting up the camp, and settles in for the night. Seraphina, Stavos, and Tork agree to take the early shifts to let Leo and Elincia recover from their hard ride. Partway into Tork's shift, he notices some very large ants moving into the camp, and starts yelling for everyone to wake up.
Everyone but Leo hears the commotion and gets to alert; he's too deeply asleep to catch on to the emergency for a bit longer, but is eventually able to rouse himself.
The ants it seems are not too dangerous, as the party is able to relatively quickly dispatch them. Stavos sews another coin into the mouth of one of the giant ants, tallying their 3rd of 10 required. Leo, now up, takes his shift and later passes it on to Elincia, without further interruptions.
In the morning a paper bird drops in front of Leo and he opens it immediately. It is from Laurelis:
"Word has been sent to the baron. Continue pursuing your quarry and you should drive them into his search parties for capture. If they have the VIP he must be protected at all costs. Try to secure a prisoner for questioning. May Halav, Petra, and Zirchev be with you. -Laurelis"
This is not exactly the news the party is hoping to hear. Now they have to make sure they get to the King before he is captured by the baron's forces. The party definitely does not trust the baron.
The party breaks down camp quickly and hits the trail. In the beginning Tork finds the trail much easier to follow, probably because he is freshly rested and the light is good. They find themselves going through varying terrain, and at one point Tork notices a spear driven into the ground and a hammer sitting on top. He points this out to the rest of the party and they all look at it, and don't know what to make of the situation. The hammer appears to be just a normal hammer that you might use for tent stakes or something, though the spear seems driven quite deep into the ground, as the shaft is only protruding a few feet. The hammer is balanced nicely on the end of the shaft.
After spending some time looking at the hammer and the spear, Seraphina decides to pull the spear from the ground, and it is much easier than expected. It is barely driven into the ground and much shorter than expected. In time, the party decides to abandon this situation, and get back to tracking the King. Stavos attempts to push the spear into the ground and balance the hammer back on top, but it tips back over. He then tries driving the spear into the ground with the hammer, and hurts his thumb in the process with a poorly placed swing. A few seconds later a strange, large, and aggressive creature bursts from the ground and attacks.
The party, as usual, does a fine job defending itself, and quickly deals what seems like a huge amount of damage to the creature, but it must be very tough. Its skin seems rock hard, and right as the party thinks it is going to be done with the fight, a second one emerges from the ground, and charges in. It leaps into the air and body slams Tork, Elincia, and Seraphina, knocking them back. Thankfully all three are quick on their feet and are only mildly damaged by the leap attack, but it stings nonetheless.
This pushes the battle into high gear, and Elincia places her spirit totem, to provide the party with temporary hit points again, and then transforms into a brown bear to be more melee capable.
The melee team gets body slammed one more time before being conscientious about not standing too close together. In a few more rounds though they are able to take down the first creature, then focus their attention on the second monster.
After this has been dealt with, the party decides they don't want to spend the time to take a short rest to avoid losing further ground, and find the jaws of these creatures are more like stony beaks - they're unable to stitch a coin into one's mouth.
Back on the trail, it seems their focus is not quite as strong this time, as it is a bit slower going. Eventually though they find the trees becoming a bit thinner, and see the edges of civilization. They continue following the kidnappers trail, and they find it leading toward a small farming village. As they approach the edge of the fields however, it seems that the kidnappers stopped for quite some time, and there are signs that the grass here is quite heavily trampled. From this vantage point it is clear that the farm ahead is some sort of slave plantation. There are people with whips overseeing a range of human and other humanoid slaves, and if the workers are not moving quickly enough, they are whipped. There are children, adults, and elderly all being forced to work. If the party wasn't chasing the King, they would most likely intervene, but the situation clearly is as expected for the Black Eagle Barony.
They continue tracking the path of the kidnappers, however the going is a bit tougher, perhaps Tork is distracted by the slave camp, or just a bit tired, but they definitely aren't making the same pace they had before. They keep on keeping on however, and the trail leads them South and West, then back Northward skirting around the town. Soon they find a campsite - this one appears fresher because, despite the rain last night, the firepit is dry, implying it was still in use this morning. They make a quick survey of the camp, but don't learn anything unexpected. They get back to the trail.
They eventually come to another farm, near a different town, and this farm too has clear signs of slavery. The party starts wondering about why the kidnappers seem to be touring the region. They are clearly not on a B-Line to any specific location since they keep stopping to observe these slavery run farms, which risks exposure and capture. Based on their discussions with Sascia of Luln, the King seems unwilling to believe that his cousin is behind all the slaving and trouble in the area, so seeing it first hand is a good thing.
Regardless, the party continues their pursuit. They start making a bit better progress again, and they know they are less than a day behind the kidnappers, though it isn't clear exactly how much time they have gained.
As the shadows are starting to get long they come upon what appears to be a camp being set up. They observe from a distance for a while, and are fairly certain that this is the King's kidnapper's camp. They see several of the dark cloaked goblins preparing the camp, and at one point they see a tall red-haired human get up and led to the center of three tents. There are two goblins guarding the tent, one on either end, and Leo sends Flametalon to perch on a branch not far beyond the King's tent. He observes through the owl for a bit, and listens, but can't understand the language spoken. The party decides after some discussion that they should try to surprise the camp, as there really aren't too many of the goblins, maybe 6 or 8. If they can wait for the camp to go to sleep, they may be able to drop a hypnotic pattern on the guards, and extract the King with no resistance and no alarm. They decide that they will sneak closer to the camp with what is left of their Pass Without Trace to allow them to observe more precisely. Meanwhile Leo casts Comprehend Languages, so he can listen through the owl to try to figure out if there is more information before they finally creep up to the edge of the camp.
Through the ears of Flametalon, he can hear the guards speaking quietly, but complaining about tonight's food not being all that great. They don't really discuss anything of import, just normal chatter. At one point they one guard asks if everything is set, perhaps implying that a handoff of the King was expected. Besides this, no real intelligence is gathered.
The party begins to move closer to the camp at this point, and with the benefits of Pass Without Trace, they are able to move undetected up to the edge of the camp. Unfortunately, the guards must have placed an Alarm spell, and the camp is immediately on high alert as the ringing of bells goes off. The Goblins scurry about, and look for the threat, but do not see anyone. It seems one spots Elincia, and points. Elincia calls out "We mean you no harm", but the Goblins don't seem to take their word for it and begin to attack. The Alarm spell causes Leo to expect at least 1 spellcaster, probably a Wizard among the goblins. When he sees one begin casting, Leo counterspells, and the caster curses, as the spell fails.
With the attack spell, the party returns fire, all the way trying to defuse the situation. Leo, seeing which of the goblins cast spells, drops Hypnotic Pattern on a location that includes the spellcaster and several of the others - it works on the caster and three others. A second caster was not hypnotized though, as they dispel the hypnotic patterns effects on one victim, another goblin second charges into the woods, triggering an attack from Tork, who attempts to knock them down, but he notices as the goblin tries to swing at him that his hands are not green at all, suggesting something besides a goblin. Seraphina moves in to assist Tork and when she strikes the "goblin" its hood drops, revealing him to be a halfling.
One of the other "Goblins" yells out "Protect the King", and Leo responds, "We mean no harm to the King!", and later "We are friends of the Hin" in an attempt to get through to them that a) they recognize them as Halflings, and b) that they are polite enough to refer to them in their preferred name.
The Halfling engaged with Tork and Seraphina tries to knock down Tork in response to Tork having tried to knock him down, and hilariously Tork is laid flat by the little guy.
By now the King has responded to the ruckus and comes out of his tent and yells, "Hold!! If you be good and true people of Karameikos, lower your weapons!" and the party does so, ending the conflict finally. Thankfully nobody was seriously harmed in the battle. Stavos steps forward and kneels, bowing his head saying "King Stefan Karameikos I presume".
King Stephan now explains that the halflings have been leading him through the Black Eagle Barony, showing him the truth of his cousin's actions, and if they had not successfully convinced him of the importance of solving this problem permanently, he would have personally charged the slaveholders and slaughtered them for their acts in his land.
The party is very pleased by his clearly visceral reaction to slavery in Karameikos. He declares it is critical that they return to Mirros so he can deal permanently with the scourge of the Black Eagle Barony.
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Report Date
04 Dec 2020
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