Hugo Tuya’s guards have tracked a band of raiders to a nest in the hills outside Ell’s Hamlet, and having destroyed their outriders, pounce on the leader and his band. The roster for this session:

  • Bao Tap, human stormcaller
  • Calim “Ambros” Nefari, human rimewarden
  • Itzel, elven astrologer
  • Kyansei of the Eilika Tribe, wildling barbarian
  • Quangbae, wandering blacksmith

They had killed the outriders in a small grove of trees on the edge of a tract of swampy ground. Following a narrow path through the trees, they came to the edge of a small, clear pool, on the far side of which a cascade of small waterfalls fell of a raised knoll. A narrow path under the waterfalls cut down to the pool’s level, and on the banks of the pool they could see a small camp ground, where probably the leader had been staying. Unfortunately he was not there: he and his remaining squad had taken position on top of the gnoll, from where they fired arrows at the guards.

Kyansei the berserker charged forward along the edge of the pool and the others followed more carefully, firing bows as they advanced. The raiders’ leader soon lived up to his name and gave up on the patient battle of archers: he came hurtling and sliding down the path from the top of the raised ground, axed raised, to meet Kyansei as she advanced. The rest of his warriors, beset by Bao Tap’s swarms of conjured midges and dragged forward by their leader’s compulsive madness, followed him into battle. Missile weapons were dropped, spear and tonfa drawn, and brutal hand-to-hand battle was joined.

Hugo Tuya’s guards triumphed quickly and almost without injury. The raider leader fell dead into the pond, and his last archers fled in terror of the guards’ fury. They scoured the camp for goods and coin, stole the raiders’ horses, and left them for the crows as they turned with renewed purpose in the direction of Ell’s Hamlet …