The misadventures of the Ringolos – Days 16 to 20
Day 16
We follow the tracks and meet a pack of direwolves that we put down without much trouble.
On our way back west to the major towns, me let curiousity get the better of us and follow a panicked man into the woods. We briefly lose track of him, but find his mangled corpse after a while. Before we get a chance to decide what to do, direwolves pounce on us!
The surprise attack leaves us disorganised, but we quickly recover and form two solid flanks.
We are very lucky to outnumber the wolves two to one, otherwise this could be our end. Our luck holds once more and we collect a few more pelts to sell off.
We run into a group of bandits just east of Wunderstadt. We chase them down, but their archer and two raiders make it an even fight. Alfgeir, who volunteered to join us after we shared some food with him, gets filled with arrows. Still, he did his part during his short career and repaid our generosity many times over. We get a nice hunting bow for Babar, a kite shield, a flail and a nice leather lamellar armor that is better than anything we currently sport.
Day 17
We hire a replacement for Alfgeir in Wunderstadt, Eberecht the gravedigger, an unimpressive soldier that is brighter than average.
We sell our accumulated pelts and end up with just over 2000 crowns. That banner will soon be ours.
We agree track down the men who stole a town grandee’s ceremonial staff for just over 400 crowns.
We catch the bandits after going through some swamps to the west. We can see that they lack discipline, as their helmetless pikeman ends up isolated right in front of our two flail holders. Hopefully, they can bash his head in and start a panic in the enemy ranks
The pikeman doesn’t survive his face-first encounter with a flail and Babar the archer takes down the two-handed axe wielder. We rapidly take down the less dangerous thugs and surround the two raiders. We manage to stab one of them and recover his worn mail shirt. We also get a pike, so our back rank will be far deadlier from now on.
We head back to town to get paid, but we surprise a large pack of nachzehrers on the way. Even if no one will pay us for destroying them, it will be a good source of experience for us. We hand out a few spears. The battle is uneventful.
Day 18
Wunderstadt is continually harassed by bandits. They offer me 1440 crowns to raze the bandits’ fort. This sudden generosity makes me feel uneasy. I don’t think we are ready for this mission. We go south to Grafenhaven to see if they have anything less dangerous.
Grafenhaven also only has a three-skull contract, but the lower payout makes me think it will be a bit safer than the one in Wunderstadt. We agree to raze a bandit group’s hideout.
On the way there, the men ask me what our next goal should be. Having just made a banner, it seems logical to name a sergeant to carry it in battle.
Just as we approach the hideout, we see a group of bandits leave to camp and go into the nearby hills. That makes this the perfect time to strike, as we will face fewer bandits. Our armour is still damaged, but we are out of tools, so we switch the armour around and give the damaged pieces to our backliners. Our scout reports seeing some marksmen and some raiders, so we decide to wait until night to attack, which should make the marksmen way less effective.
We win the battle, but at a tremendous cost. Gustave and Horace both get killed. We just lost one of our three original survivors, the company’s most talented melee fighter. The company’s morale will suffer badly from this. Even in the darkness, the enemy marksmen made their shots count. If we had attacked during the day, we would have been slaugthered.
Still, we recover some very nice equipment from the battlefield: a pike, a two-handed warbrand, a strong hunting spear, some daggers, three strong helmets and a mail shirt
We make Kettilmund our sergeant after the battle. That shores up the men’s morale, but I have doubts about the wisdom a making an officer out of a coward.
Day 19
We make it back to town and get paid. The company is down to nine men, so we hire Erik the apprentice and Valdemar the fisherman. Erik is nothing special, but Wolfgang has potential
We go back to Treiten. Before we even enter the town, the mayor runs up and begs us to defend the town from raiding parties. We would hate to see this nice village razed, so we agree to help them for 960 crowns. We set up our camp and wait for word of the bandits’ approach. Around the campfire, we decide to try to catch the eye of the noble houses. These village contracts allow us to survive, but we want more out of life than merely avoiding starvation.
Day 20
Way face 8 raiders, three of them armed with longaxes. This does not look good. We fall back so that we fight them on even ground.
We should have fallen back farther, as the longaxemen can swing at us from higher ground. Still, we win the battle with only one loss: Erik the apprentice, one of our new recruits. We pick up three longaxes and some nice armour.
We make it back to town and rest for the night.