you might very well think so...

Session 4: Assaulted by Orcs!

Our heroes have delivered their gift to the Wizard of Thurmaster and did him a favour on the way back to Milbourne: take this letter to my friend the Ranger!

While at the Ranger's farm house, a visitor arrives: a strange lady druid-of-the-woods with a pair of companion wolves.

She reports that a young boy has run off into the woods south of the river, and she fears for his safety: first because he's a young boy in the midst of a dark and dangerous woods, and second because she saw him turn into a bear as he ran off! She wants the Ranger and his new friends to help her find this boy and return him safely to his family.

Our heroes search southwards into the woods, travel for a whole day and are making progress; as it gets dark, they make camp. In the early hours of the pre-dawn light they are set upon by a scouting party of Orcs and their ferocious pet creature! Desperately they try to defend themselves, and in the end, manage to dispatch the creature and elicit surrender from the Orc sergeant.

"I will give you gold for the bodies of my fallen comrades!" he cries.

Legend: I have now fully switched to the coloured tile system for NPCs. While the large creature was supposed to be a Dire Boar, I had not yet made a tile for a Dire Boar, so a large red subterranean lizard did double duty. Bah. Flipped over tiles are the bodies of the Orc party (mostly minions) that had already fallen (including, as it turns out, the handler of the large creature, the only one capable of really controlling it!)

Session 3: Meeting the locals
Our heroes become very minor celebrities in Milbourne by arriving in town with a handful of captured bandits in tow. They meet the Milbourne dignitaries, and submit their captured bandits to Imperial Justice: the bandits, as a result, will spend a long time working the local barony's mines.

After chatting with a farmer from Harlaton on Milbourne's market day about a nearby Kobold tribe, and purchasing (with a down-payment) armour they cannot afford (yet), our heroes head off to Thurmaster to meet Tauster the Wizard.

The trip to Thurmaster passes uneventfully, our heroes provide him with his gift, and when he learns that they will soon be some need of funds, he offers to commission them to deliver a package to a certain Kyuper, who lives on the way between Thurmaster and Milbourne.

Upon delivering the package, Kuyper is visited by a local druidess, who engages our heroes to assist her in finding a boy who's disappeared into the local Big Scary Woods™.

Legend: No picture this week, as no encounters. Not a good recipe for a group including a bunch of young kids. Future vow: every session must have a battlemapped encounter. Since sessions last for 90-120 minutes, this will make session pacing an interesting challenge.

Session 2: Treed at the creek!
On their way to Milbourne, our brave heroes of the Bear Clan encounter a pack of needle drakes that have chased a priest up a tree! Quickly, they move to rescue the priest, and discover that packs of needle drakes are not to be trifled with...

At the moment when they dispatch the last of the nasty pests, a small party of kobolds emerge from the trees, and demand compensation for the loss of their hunting pets!

"30 gold pieces!" shrieks the Kobold Drake Handler!

Legend: The bear in the foreground is actually Uli the Shaman's Bear Spirit (very powerful, but also easily knocked down, apparently). The figure at the top of the map is Brandis the Druid, keeping an eye on the remnants of the bandit gang that our heroes captured in the previous episode (now conveying them in a cowed line to Milbourne).