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An Adventure in Five Acts (AD&D 2E) (Final Update 25 Feb 2023)
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<blockquote data-quote="ilgatto" data-source="post: 8876131" data-attributes="member: 86051"><p style="text-align: center"></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"><strong>An Adventure in Five Acts, Act IV (Continued)</strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>Day 14</strong>: Just after the morning rain, Navarre pays a visit to the barber for a shave. When he gets back to the tent, he grabs some breakfast, quaffs a couple of glasses of wine and dons his armor before joining some of his noble fellows on their way to the lake. Here, the duke’s soldiers are already embarking and it doesn’t take long before the first boat sets off – our noble heroes on board.</p><p>There are a total of 20 boats, each carrying around ten soldiers. When the fleet is about halfway, Sir Suvali takes to the air – to the loud cheers and applause of the duke and his entourage in the last boat.</p><p>When the boats get to the island, the soldiers are landed in groups of ten and spread out along the shore before moving inland in an orderly fashion.</p><p></p><p>Our noble heroes decide to go after Sir Suvali. They advance cautiously but meet no resistance and, when they get to the festival area, they find only collapsed tents, broken chairs and tables as a poignant reminder of what happened here two weeks ago. Items of clothing lie strewn about and there are the remains of several extinguished fires and similar debris. There is no sign of anything even remotely valuable – no weapons, no glasses, no cups, no cutlery, nothing. There are no corpses.</p><p>“Where is everybody?,” Navarre asks. “Where are our kinsmen?”</p><p>When Sir Suvali appears, he is once again in the company of the dogs he had to leave behind when our noble heroes fled the island.</p><p>“Found them in the forest,” he says. “Follow me, gentlemen. The mass grave.”</p><p>Our noble heroes follow the sorcerer to the edge of the forest, to an area of loose earth some 30 by 30 feet. There are definite signs of digging after the fact, leaving some body parts exposed.</p><p>“Looters,” Sir Eber says. “We’ll need shovels.”</p><p>Sir Suvali flies back to the landing site and presently returns with some shovels. Sir Eber and Navarre take one each and start digging. After some time, they conclude there must be some four dozen corpses in the grave. They haven’t found anyone they know – indeed, it seems that the grave contains only the corpses of royalist soldiers and servants.</p><p>“No one,” Navarre says, wiping his forehead when he is taking a breather. “How many more of these graves do you think there are?”</p><p>“Don’t care,” Sir Eber says. “I’ll dig until I find my family.”</p><p>The noble duo continue their efforts, finding more soldiers and servants until Sir Oengus appears.</p><p>“All boats at the jetties have been sunk, most of them burnt,” he says. “We found some four mass graves – maybe there are more than a hundred people buried over there. We did some digging and found mostly royalist soldiers. Naked. No humanoids. No enemy corpses. No signs of the invaders at all.”</p><p>“I don’t get it,” Navarre says. “Where are our people?”</p><p>“Taken away,” the <em>chevalier</em> says. “Maybe they will use them against us.”</p><p>“My dear fellow!,” Navarre cries. “Taken? How? Do you think they would go willingly? Take up arms against us? Preposterous!”</p><p>“There can be other ways to turn them against us,” the <em>chevalier</em> says with a shiver. “In the service of Ulm.”</p><p>It takes some time before Navarre gets an idea of what the <em>chevalier</em> may be on about.</p><p>“The walking dead?,” he says, with a look of both anger and disbelief on his face. “Haven’t we heard enough old wives’ tales of late?”</p><p>“Everything points to a raid,” Sir Suvali says. “In and out, take everything of value, leave no corpses. Let’s go and see where the King was killed.”</p><p>When our noble heroes get to the Royal Barrows, they find much of the same – some burnt corpses are in the ashes of long-extinguished fires. An inspection of the barrows proper informs them that all supplies are gone.</p><p>“I don’t get it,” Navarre says. “What in Olm’s name went on here?”</p><p>“It was a foraging raid,” the <em>chevalier</em> says. “An army travels on its stomach.”</p><p>“A foraging raid?,” Navarre cries in exasperation. “Travel where? Where are they now? What about our kinsmen? By Olm! Who are these people? Where are they going? Where did they come from?”</p><p>“It must be the Icy Waste,” Sir Suvali says. “With the lands below the rivers back under control there’s nowhere else they can be. They must have come from the Icy Waste as well. No one lives in the mountains except Blurh.”</p><p>“So they passed Blurh…,” Navarre muses. “I wonder what he will have to say about the matter.”</p><p>“I’ll go and have a look,” Sir Suvali says.</p><p>“Perhaps we should all go,” Navarre says. “Can you not use your magic wand again?”</p><p>Obviously shocked, the sorcerer starts speaking rather incoherently: “No!. Erm… I think not! I’ll be safer on my own! You are needed here to convince Mim! Lead your armies! You see?”</p><p>Navarre casts his noble companion a suspicious glance but then decides he doesn’t want to know.</p><p>“If you say so,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “It seems we are about finished here anyway. I suggest we get on with it. Rally our armies and join Mim to fight whatever is up there in the mountains.”</p><p>“Let’s check where they landed,” Sir Suvali says, obviously relieved. “See what we can find there.”</p><p>Our noble heroes subject the beach to a close inspection but find nothing they didn’t already know. There were multiple landing craft and the tracks in the sand indicate that there must have been many, many invaders.</p><p></p><p>Realizing that this probably still won’t be enough to convince Mim and the other nobles of the true nature and numbers of the enemy, Navarre decides to have another look at where he and the others fought the soldiers chasing Augustus Magister Rex.</p><p>When he gets there, he has a good look around but only finds more of the same until, finally, he actually does find some sign of the enemy: it is an arrow, fairly standard but of some quality, black and with red fletching, a iron arrow head painted red, and a band of red paint at the back of the shaft. Unable to connect the colors to any known banner, Navarre guesses that it must have belonged to one the various bandit or mercenary groups. Although he realizes that it isn’t much, he still takes the arrow back to his noble companions. When he joins them, Sir Eber has just rolled a “1” on his <em>Tracking</em> skill and he presently points at a clear print of a booted foot at least three times larger than that of an ordinary man. An additional investigation clearly reveals that the giant came ashore, moved in a straight line to where the King was and then straight back to the beach.</p><p></p><p>When Duke Mim and his entourage arrive, Navarre shows them the arrow, which neither the duke nor his entourage say they recognize. They do appear to be somewhat impressed by the footprint.</p><p>“Uncommonly large foot I’d say,” the duke admits, before turning to his entourage. “Gentlemen, that will be all! Get your men back to the camp and have them prepare to sail up the Blue River at first light tomorrow. Let’s put an end to this damn’ thing!”</p><p>“That gives us time to cross the mountains,” Sir Eber says. “Check in on Blurh before that. The man must have seen something when these bastards passed him.”</p><p>“Agreed,” Sir Suvali says, lowering his voice quite considerably after a furtive glance at Duke Mim. “It’ll take me more than eight hours of straight flying to get to Blurh and I don’t want to do the whole thing in one go. Getting to Blurh may take me as much as twenty hours. That’s almost a day and a night and that only gets me to Blurh.”</p><p>“‛Me’?,” the ranger asks. “You going alone?”</p><p>Sir Suvali starts stammering again.</p><p>“Well…,” he starts. “It’s like… You see? I’ll be faster in my own… You…”</p><p>“Stop whining, mage,” the ranger growls. “I want to be there when you get to the Icy Waste.”</p><p>“Alright! Alright!,” the sorcerer says hastily, casting another glance at the duke. “We’ll leave at dusk.”</p><p>“What are you chaps on about?,” the duke asks. “Cross the mountains? Icy Waste?”</p><p></p><p>Perhaps the duke has been listening after all. Our noble heroes exchange some looks.</p><p>“We have his attention,” Navarre says. “I say we show him the map.”</p><p>When the others nod their agreement, Sir Suvali reaches into his robes, procures the map and unrolls it.</p><p>“What’s this?,” the duke asks, looking at the map with interest and then back at our noble heroes. For some reason, he doesn’t seem very surprised at all.</p><p>“It’s an extended map of the world,” Sir Suvali says. “The enemy may have come from beyond the mountains.”</p><p>“It is where the giants come from,” the <em>chevalier</em> says.</p><p>“We’ll have to cross the mountains if we find that Blurh has fallen and there’s no sign of the enemy,” Sir Suvali says.</p><p>“Best take care up there,” the duke says. “Been to these mountains. Tall bastards. At least twelve thousand feet. Not for the fainthearted. Giant eagles in the sky and all that.”</p><p>“This is no time for the fainthearted,” Navarre says. “We will cross them if we cannot find the enemy.”</p><p>“Let’s put it this way,” Sir Suvali says. “We’ll start flying rimward and get back to you as soon as we find something of interest. Since we’ll be moving a lot faster than the army, we’ll have plenty of time to warn you of anything untoward before you get there. If I’m not back within, say, forty hours, you can advance as far as Blurh without any problems and make camp there. I’ll report to you there if we find anything beyond the mountains. We’ll leave tonight so that we will fly as much as we can under cover of the night.”</p><p>“Gentlemen, I accept your proposition,” Duke Mim declares. “Damned if we don’t need all the information we can get and damned if you chaps aren’t the ones to do it! You’ll leave tonight and get back to me as soon as you have something to say. <em>Messieurs,</em> I salute you!”</p><p></p><p>And so it is that our noble heroes return to the army camp and spend the rest of the day preparing for their trip to the mountains, stocking up on supplies, polishing and checking their weapons and armors, and so on.</p><p>Sir Suvali takes to the air just after sunset. The others have been reduced in size again and each is in his own pocket of the <em>mage vest.</em> It has been agreed that they will sleep while the sorcerer flies, except Sir Oerknal, who will serve as an extra pair of eyes.</p><p></p><p><strong>Day 15</strong>: Some eight hours later, just before the morning rain and after he has flown a considerable distance up the Blue River, Sir Suvali decides he has had enough and lands in the forest. He wakes the others and instructs them to stand guard while he and Sir Oerknal get some sleep.</p><p>He wakes up again just short of eight hours later and, after a quick bite to eat, he takes to the air once more, his noble fellows back in the pockets of his vest. Now flying in daylight, our noble heroes sees the valley get narrower and narrower, the farms and jetties on the banks of the river slowly disappearing as they make way for a mixture of rocky slopes and dense coniferous forests. In the distance loom the snowy peaks of the mountains and the whole gives the landscape a rugged, even foreboding look.</p><p>About three hours later, they spot what appears to be a collection of buildings at a jetty on the dawnward bank of the river. As they get closer, they also discern a fortified hill a bit further up the valley. A high palisade runs across the top of the hill from forest to forest and the fortification is buzzing with activity.</p><p>“It’s them!,” Navarre says, excitedly. “By Olm! It’s the enemy!”</p><p></p><p>Sir Suvali turns right and lands on some vantage point among the trees, from where our noble heroes observe the goings on for a while. There is no activity at the buildings near the jetty, which must be an inn of some sort. Tracks on both sides of the river run up to the fortification, the construct effectively blocking all access to the hinterland. Beyond the palisade, the tracks continue, the one on the duskward bank soon turning left and disappearing into the forest. On the dawnward bank, the track continues, turning into little more than a goat’s trail when it reaches a steep cliff face still further up the valley. About halfway back between there and the palisade, a sidetrack turns into the forest to the right. In the hinterland, groups of bandits or mercenaries with dogs are seen, obviously patrols. There must be at least a thousand men on the fortified hill, some half of whom appear to be iron-clad halberdiers, the remainder being bandits and perhaps mercenaries in leather armor. From the palisade fly many black banners – the banners of Ulm.</p><p>“By Olm!,” Navarre says to Sir Eber, who is right beside him. “How long do you think they have been here?”</p><p>“Building that palisade probably takes about three days,” the ranger says.</p><p>“The cavalry!,” the <em>chevalier</em> suddenly yells. “We must get back! The horses are no match for halberdiers! He will be cut to pieces!”</p><p>Navarre and Sir Eber look at their noble companion in amazement.</p><p>“What are you on about?,” Navarre asks.</p><p>“<em>La cavalerie!,”</em> the <em>chevalier</em> cries. “Mim will run his horses straight into the palisade and kill them all! They are uphill and behind that palisade! We must stop him!”</p><p>“The Duke may be many things but I don’t think he’ll be that stupid,” Navarre says. “Poor? Yes. Pig-headed? Absolutely. But a complete idiot? No. The man has eyes like all of us, old fruit. Why would he order an attack that will lead to certain defeat?”</p><p>“<em>Mais tu comprends pas!,”</em> the <em>chevalier</em> cries. “He will charge the enemy as soon as he sees them. He is <em>chevalier!”</em></p><p>“Mim?,” Navarre scoffs. “A cavalier? Nonsense! Even if he were, wouldn’t that be all the more reason for him to know that he cannot win an uphill battle against halberdiers behind a palisade?”</p><p>However, as so often seems to be the case these days, the <em>chevalier</em> doesn’t seem to want to hear him and continues rambling on and on about Mim running his horses into palisades and that he must be stopped. Navarre is just about to ask him how he thinks to achieve this when the <em>chevalier</em> seems to reach a somewhat unconnected conclusion all on his own.</p><p>“That’s it!,” he cries. “We must stop the flow of the river! Deprive them of water!”</p><p>Navarre wonders how much his noble friend has been drinking.</p><p>“Stop the river?,” he asks. “Stop a river? And how would we go about that?”</p><p>“Block the source!,” the <em>chevalier</em> cries. “Where is the source?”</p><p>“Somewhere in the mountains back there, I says,” Sir Oengus says.</p><p><em>“Mes amis!,”</em> the <em>chevalier</em> cries. “We have found our mission! We must find the source and block it!”</p><p>“I say we don’t spend any more charges of the wand than absolutely necessary,” Sir Suvali says. “You’ll all get back to normal again in about three hours so we have just enough time left to get to Blurh and back.”</p><p>“I concur,” Navarre says. “We must find out what happened to Blurh. There must be a thousand men down there!”</p><p>“He may be with them,” Sir Eber says.</p><p>Navarre considers this for a while.</p><p>“Whatever the case may be, we must get this information to Mim as soon as possible,” he says, before turning to the sorcerer. “Since you seem unwilling to use the wand, perhaps you should get back to him alone. You can get us to Blurh before you go and even leave us there depending on what we find. Perhaps we can do something up there while you’re away, even though we will have to wait until we get back to normal again. I don’t want to be running for cover each time we come to the attention of a sparrow.”</p><p>“Bah,” Sir Eber says, flexing his muscles. “Have a little faith!”</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ilgatto, post: 8876131, member: 86051"] [CENTER][/CENTER] [SIZE=5][B]An Adventure in Five Acts, Act IV (Continued)[/B][/SIZE] [B]Day 14[/B]: Just after the morning rain, Navarre pays a visit to the barber for a shave. When he gets back to the tent, he grabs some breakfast, quaffs a couple of glasses of wine and dons his armor before joining some of his noble fellows on their way to the lake. Here, the duke’s soldiers are already embarking and it doesn’t take long before the first boat sets off – our noble heroes on board. There are a total of 20 boats, each carrying around ten soldiers. When the fleet is about halfway, Sir Suvali takes to the air – to the loud cheers and applause of the duke and his entourage in the last boat. When the boats get to the island, the soldiers are landed in groups of ten and spread out along the shore before moving inland in an orderly fashion. Our noble heroes decide to go after Sir Suvali. They advance cautiously but meet no resistance and, when they get to the festival area, they find only collapsed tents, broken chairs and tables as a poignant reminder of what happened here two weeks ago. Items of clothing lie strewn about and there are the remains of several extinguished fires and similar debris. There is no sign of anything even remotely valuable – no weapons, no glasses, no cups, no cutlery, nothing. There are no corpses. “Where is everybody?,” Navarre asks. “Where are our kinsmen?” When Sir Suvali appears, he is once again in the company of the dogs he had to leave behind when our noble heroes fled the island. “Found them in the forest,” he says. “Follow me, gentlemen. The mass grave.” Our noble heroes follow the sorcerer to the edge of the forest, to an area of loose earth some 30 by 30 feet. There are definite signs of digging after the fact, leaving some body parts exposed. “Looters,” Sir Eber says. “We’ll need shovels.” Sir Suvali flies back to the landing site and presently returns with some shovels. Sir Eber and Navarre take one each and start digging. After some time, they conclude there must be some four dozen corpses in the grave. They haven’t found anyone they know – indeed, it seems that the grave contains only the corpses of royalist soldiers and servants. “No one,” Navarre says, wiping his forehead when he is taking a breather. “How many more of these graves do you think there are?” “Don’t care,” Sir Eber says. “I’ll dig until I find my family.” The noble duo continue their efforts, finding more soldiers and servants until Sir Oengus appears. “All boats at the jetties have been sunk, most of them burnt,” he says. “We found some four mass graves – maybe there are more than a hundred people buried over there. We did some digging and found mostly royalist soldiers. Naked. No humanoids. No enemy corpses. No signs of the invaders at all.” “I don’t get it,” Navarre says. “Where are our people?” “Taken away,” the [I]chevalier[/I] says. “Maybe they will use them against us.” “My dear fellow!,” Navarre cries. “Taken? How? Do you think they would go willingly? Take up arms against us? Preposterous!” “There can be other ways to turn them against us,” the [I]chevalier[/I] says with a shiver. “In the service of Ulm.” It takes some time before Navarre gets an idea of what the [I]chevalier[/I] may be on about. “The walking dead?,” he says, with a look of both anger and disbelief on his face. “Haven’t we heard enough old wives’ tales of late?” “Everything points to a raid,” Sir Suvali says. “In and out, take everything of value, leave no corpses. Let’s go and see where the King was killed.” When our noble heroes get to the Royal Barrows, they find much of the same – some burnt corpses are in the ashes of long-extinguished fires. An inspection of the barrows proper informs them that all supplies are gone. “I don’t get it,” Navarre says. “What in Olm’s name went on here?” “It was a foraging raid,” the [I]chevalier[/I] says. “An army travels on its stomach.” “A foraging raid?,” Navarre cries in exasperation. “Travel where? Where are they now? What about our kinsmen? By Olm! Who are these people? Where are they going? Where did they come from?” “It must be the Icy Waste,” Sir Suvali says. “With the lands below the rivers back under control there’s nowhere else they can be. They must have come from the Icy Waste as well. No one lives in the mountains except Blurh.” “So they passed Blurh…,” Navarre muses. “I wonder what he will have to say about the matter.” “I’ll go and have a look,” Sir Suvali says. “Perhaps we should all go,” Navarre says. “Can you not use your magic wand again?” Obviously shocked, the sorcerer starts speaking rather incoherently: “No!. Erm… I think not! I’ll be safer on my own! You are needed here to convince Mim! Lead your armies! You see?” Navarre casts his noble companion a suspicious glance but then decides he doesn’t want to know. “If you say so,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “It seems we are about finished here anyway. I suggest we get on with it. Rally our armies and join Mim to fight whatever is up there in the mountains.” “Let’s check where they landed,” Sir Suvali says, obviously relieved. “See what we can find there.” Our noble heroes subject the beach to a close inspection but find nothing they didn’t already know. There were multiple landing craft and the tracks in the sand indicate that there must have been many, many invaders. Realizing that this probably still won’t be enough to convince Mim and the other nobles of the true nature and numbers of the enemy, Navarre decides to have another look at where he and the others fought the soldiers chasing Augustus Magister Rex. When he gets there, he has a good look around but only finds more of the same until, finally, he actually does find some sign of the enemy: it is an arrow, fairly standard but of some quality, black and with red fletching, a iron arrow head painted red, and a band of red paint at the back of the shaft. Unable to connect the colors to any known banner, Navarre guesses that it must have belonged to one the various bandit or mercenary groups. Although he realizes that it isn’t much, he still takes the arrow back to his noble companions. When he joins them, Sir Eber has just rolled a “1” on his [I]Tracking[/I] skill and he presently points at a clear print of a booted foot at least three times larger than that of an ordinary man. An additional investigation clearly reveals that the giant came ashore, moved in a straight line to where the King was and then straight back to the beach. When Duke Mim and his entourage arrive, Navarre shows them the arrow, which neither the duke nor his entourage say they recognize. They do appear to be somewhat impressed by the footprint. “Uncommonly large foot I’d say,” the duke admits, before turning to his entourage. “Gentlemen, that will be all! Get your men back to the camp and have them prepare to sail up the Blue River at first light tomorrow. Let’s put an end to this damn’ thing!” “That gives us time to cross the mountains,” Sir Eber says. “Check in on Blurh before that. The man must have seen something when these bastards passed him.” “Agreed,” Sir Suvali says, lowering his voice quite considerably after a furtive glance at Duke Mim. “It’ll take me more than eight hours of straight flying to get to Blurh and I don’t want to do the whole thing in one go. Getting to Blurh may take me as much as twenty hours. That’s almost a day and a night and that only gets me to Blurh.” “‛Me’?,” the ranger asks. “You going alone?” Sir Suvali starts stammering again. “Well…,” he starts. “It’s like… You see? I’ll be faster in my own… You…” “Stop whining, mage,” the ranger growls. “I want to be there when you get to the Icy Waste.” “Alright! Alright!,” the sorcerer says hastily, casting another glance at the duke. “We’ll leave at dusk.” “What are you chaps on about?,” the duke asks. “Cross the mountains? Icy Waste?” Perhaps the duke has been listening after all. Our noble heroes exchange some looks. “We have his attention,” Navarre says. “I say we show him the map.” When the others nod their agreement, Sir Suvali reaches into his robes, procures the map and unrolls it. “What’s this?,” the duke asks, looking at the map with interest and then back at our noble heroes. For some reason, he doesn’t seem very surprised at all. “It’s an extended map of the world,” Sir Suvali says. “The enemy may have come from beyond the mountains.” “It is where the giants come from,” the [I]chevalier[/I] says. “We’ll have to cross the mountains if we find that Blurh has fallen and there’s no sign of the enemy,” Sir Suvali says. “Best take care up there,” the duke says. “Been to these mountains. Tall bastards. At least twelve thousand feet. Not for the fainthearted. Giant eagles in the sky and all that.” “This is no time for the fainthearted,” Navarre says. “We will cross them if we cannot find the enemy.” “Let’s put it this way,” Sir Suvali says. “We’ll start flying rimward and get back to you as soon as we find something of interest. Since we’ll be moving a lot faster than the army, we’ll have plenty of time to warn you of anything untoward before you get there. If I’m not back within, say, forty hours, you can advance as far as Blurh without any problems and make camp there. I’ll report to you there if we find anything beyond the mountains. We’ll leave tonight so that we will fly as much as we can under cover of the night.” “Gentlemen, I accept your proposition,” Duke Mim declares. “Damned if we don’t need all the information we can get and damned if you chaps aren’t the ones to do it! You’ll leave tonight and get back to me as soon as you have something to say. [I]Messieurs,[/I] I salute you!” And so it is that our noble heroes return to the army camp and spend the rest of the day preparing for their trip to the mountains, stocking up on supplies, polishing and checking their weapons and armors, and so on. Sir Suvali takes to the air just after sunset. The others have been reduced in size again and each is in his own pocket of the [I]mage vest.[/I] It has been agreed that they will sleep while the sorcerer flies, except Sir Oerknal, who will serve as an extra pair of eyes. [B]Day 15[/B]: Some eight hours later, just before the morning rain and after he has flown a considerable distance up the Blue River, Sir Suvali decides he has had enough and lands in the forest. He wakes the others and instructs them to stand guard while he and Sir Oerknal get some sleep. He wakes up again just short of eight hours later and, after a quick bite to eat, he takes to the air once more, his noble fellows back in the pockets of his vest. Now flying in daylight, our noble heroes sees the valley get narrower and narrower, the farms and jetties on the banks of the river slowly disappearing as they make way for a mixture of rocky slopes and dense coniferous forests. In the distance loom the snowy peaks of the mountains and the whole gives the landscape a rugged, even foreboding look. About three hours later, they spot what appears to be a collection of buildings at a jetty on the dawnward bank of the river. As they get closer, they also discern a fortified hill a bit further up the valley. A high palisade runs across the top of the hill from forest to forest and the fortification is buzzing with activity. “It’s them!,” Navarre says, excitedly. “By Olm! It’s the enemy!” Sir Suvali turns right and lands on some vantage point among the trees, from where our noble heroes observe the goings on for a while. There is no activity at the buildings near the jetty, which must be an inn of some sort. Tracks on both sides of the river run up to the fortification, the construct effectively blocking all access to the hinterland. Beyond the palisade, the tracks continue, the one on the duskward bank soon turning left and disappearing into the forest. On the dawnward bank, the track continues, turning into little more than a goat’s trail when it reaches a steep cliff face still further up the valley. About halfway back between there and the palisade, a sidetrack turns into the forest to the right. In the hinterland, groups of bandits or mercenaries with dogs are seen, obviously patrols. There must be at least a thousand men on the fortified hill, some half of whom appear to be iron-clad halberdiers, the remainder being bandits and perhaps mercenaries in leather armor. From the palisade fly many black banners – the banners of Ulm. “By Olm!,” Navarre says to Sir Eber, who is right beside him. “How long do you think they have been here?” “Building that palisade probably takes about three days,” the ranger says. “The cavalry!,” the [I]chevalier[/I] suddenly yells. “We must get back! The horses are no match for halberdiers! He will be cut to pieces!” Navarre and Sir Eber look at their noble companion in amazement. “What are you on about?,” Navarre asks. “[I]La cavalerie!,”[/I] the [I]chevalier[/I] cries. “Mim will run his horses straight into the palisade and kill them all! They are uphill and behind that palisade! We must stop him!” “The Duke may be many things but I don’t think he’ll be that stupid,” Navarre says. “Poor? Yes. Pig-headed? Absolutely. But a complete idiot? No. The man has eyes like all of us, old fruit. Why would he order an attack that will lead to certain defeat?” “[I]Mais tu comprends pas!,”[/I] the [I]chevalier[/I] cries. “He will charge the enemy as soon as he sees them. He is [I]chevalier!”[/I] “Mim?,” Navarre scoffs. “A cavalier? Nonsense! Even if he were, wouldn’t that be all the more reason for him to know that he cannot win an uphill battle against halberdiers behind a palisade?” However, as so often seems to be the case these days, the [I]chevalier[/I] doesn’t seem to want to hear him and continues rambling on and on about Mim running his horses into palisades and that he must be stopped. Navarre is just about to ask him how he thinks to achieve this when the [I]chevalier[/I] seems to reach a somewhat unconnected conclusion all on his own. “That’s it!,” he cries. “We must stop the flow of the river! Deprive them of water!” Navarre wonders how much his noble friend has been drinking. “Stop the river?,” he asks. “Stop a river? And how would we go about that?” “Block the source!,” the [I]chevalier[/I] cries. “Where is the source?” “Somewhere in the mountains back there, I says,” Sir Oengus says. [I]“Mes amis!,”[/I] the [I]chevalier[/I] cries. “We have found our mission! We must find the source and block it!” “I say we don’t spend any more charges of the wand than absolutely necessary,” Sir Suvali says. “You’ll all get back to normal again in about three hours so we have just enough time left to get to Blurh and back.” “I concur,” Navarre says. “We must find out what happened to Blurh. There must be a thousand men down there!” “He may be with them,” Sir Eber says. Navarre considers this for a while. “Whatever the case may be, we must get this information to Mim as soon as possible,” he says, before turning to the sorcerer. “Since you seem unwilling to use the wand, perhaps you should get back to him alone. You can get us to Blurh before you go and even leave us there depending on what we find. Perhaps we can do something up there while you’re away, even though we will have to wait until we get back to normal again. I don’t want to be running for cover each time we come to the attention of a sparrow.” “Bah,” Sir Eber says, flexing his muscles. “Have a little faith!” [/QUOTE]
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An Adventure in Five Acts (AD&D 2E) (Final Update 25 Feb 2023)
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