Session 49 - Letters from Africa

General Summary

A letter to Quintus Verecundia, waiting to be sent:

Dearest little brother, We have found ourselves in a city lost to the enemy: they call themselves Yuan-Ti and look like giant snakes who grew arms and legs so they could walk around like we do. The monsters keep human captives for food. It is not the first time I have been confronted by the high cost of conflict on noncombatants. The orcs/goblins raided villages and were known to take captives as slave labor. There is something about youth, though, that I think does not feel the full preciousness of itself. Certainly, I wished to help such people in the past. To get them away to safer lands. But often I felt aggravation that they had not removed themselves from conflict, and if a few among them died during rescue, well, soldiers often died too. Some are always lost. But with maturity, and I suppose having finally been given a chance to watch you and the others raise their broods, I felt an urgency akin to panic to rescue the captives without loss of one single life. Especially the children and their parents. As mortality plays with me, I feel more deeply how precious we all are. Minerva shield you all. Your loving sister, Tertia Pennaria P.S. The children I know have adopted an alley cat and love to collect mice for it to pounce on…Mkali is of the same spirit. Watching his antics play out with human-size snakes-with-legs is astounding. He was almost kittenish by the time we finished eliminating patrols of Yuan-ti so that we could attempt a rescue. If it had been up to him, we would have eliminated every Yuan-ti in the city. I’m half a mind to let him, after the indignities he has been asked to endure (boats, being carried in a basket by a giant eagle, trying to bite a creature made out of walking magma). P.P.S. Please apologize to your son that I have not been able to send him tales, but tell him we have now battled two dragons. One was red and breathed fire, the other was blue and spat lightening! Jupiter’s own dragon

A crumpled letter in Tertia’s pack that she never sent to her former mentor and now-retired-general, Faustus Cornelius Sulla:

I don’t know if there have been enough survivors of encounters with Yuan-ti to provide much in the way of strategic or tactical information, but here are some things I have learned in our brief foray in the fallen city of Rakota. They have a greater-than-average number of rank-and-file combatants that use magic. In particular they favor misdirection and manipulation. Several times I was targeted by magic that tried to control my thoughts and actions. Even more common was a spell to create perfect, but illusory, duplicates of themselves, so that when you battle them your sword would often pierce through air rather than flesh. Even if you strike at a target that you had scored moments before, you could find it would no longer be a real person. The weakness of this magic is that any hit against a mirage would dispel it. Weapons that spray many small projections would be exceedingly useful against this one. I also saw them able to use illusion to appear human. There were two of them hiding in the ranks of human slaves (whom they also treat as food). Based on the behavior of the captive humans, who did not trust that we were real when we attempted to free them, this was probably not uncommon. Given that the slaves were likely on the lookout for such counterfeits, the ability of the Yuan-ti to study and mimic other races must be excellent! Be wary and, if engaged in hostile actions with Yuan-it, regularly question your officers about specific details of past engagements to be certain there is not a spy in your ranks. In regard to their leadership, they appear to be ruled by priests and their more powerful magical users. Powerful warriors are not without value in their society, but I think it is magic that matters most in the choice of leader. Their weakness, I think, is likely overconfidence. The patrol around the slave compound followed a very repetitive rhythm, with four patrols who were almost never in earshot or visual range of each other. It was easier than we expected to use a single kill zone to intercept each patrol in its turn around the rotation. Note, though, that we did have access to magics that allowed us to clear away obvious signs of conflict (blood, spent arrows, etc) between patrols. They are overconfident, but not dumb or unobservant. If we had any available naval resources, I believe this would be an excellent time to re-establish Roman control of Rakota. The occupying force is NOT large and spread quite thin. I think this occupying force is small for a number of reasons: They had as an ally a dragon, blue-scaled, that would fly regular patrols over the harbor and city. I believe they relied heavily on this asset to maintain control of Rakota. This asset has been neutralized. Their main forces are probably now in Carthage. reason,lightly armored