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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 9790520" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for the kudos. In a few of my past stories I polled the readership about their favorite characters. The rapscallion smart-asses like Ravani are usually popular, but I admit a fondness for the sturdy, straight-laced leader types like Leana. * * *Chapter 19Everything happened all at once.Folgar staggered back as he took two hits, a graze that sliced open a long gash along the left side of his jaw, and a second that buried into his shoulder, almost exactly where the goblin archer had shot him a few hours before. He returned fire with his ray of frost, but the beam missed as the bandit darted back out of the way. The third bandit missed entirely; his bolt shot past everyone before vanishing into the surrounding trees.Pral lunged toward Greghan, who barely got his sword out of his scabbard before the bandit was upon him. The man lunged expertly with his rapier, striking him in the chest, but the point failed to pierce the dense links of his chainmail armor. Greghan’s return swing was clumsy, and the bandit easily dodged it, resetting his stance with an ease that bespoke an easy familiarity with his weapon.“You may look like a warrior, but you fight like a clumsy oaf,” Pral said. “Yield, and we’ll just take your gold.”Greghan didn’t get a chance to respond before Ravani shot Pral in the neck. The arrow just barely clipped his skin, a scant inch from a lethal wound. The bandit leader snarled and cursed at the other male bandit, who was still trying to reload his crossbow. “Don’t just stand there, Mard, kill that elf!” The man obediently slung his bow and drew his sword, forcing Ravani to do the same as the two squared off.Leana stepped forward and touched her sigil to Folgar, healing the two wounds he’d just taken. The wizard scowled as he plucked the bloody bolt from the wound, and fired another ray of frost that barely clipped the bandit archer who’d shot him. The woman stumbled back into the cover of the bushes, frantically cocking her weapon with her belt claw. A moment later, the other woman shot Folgar again, this time in the other shoulder. “He won’t go down!” the bandit cried.Pral let out an exasperated sigh. “Try shooting the healer!” he yelled. He shrugged at Greghan. “So difficult to find quality help these days,” he said.The warrior swung at the bandit, wary now of his speed. Pral proved that again as he reacted with a darting slash that might have blinded Greghan, if not for the fortuitous luck of a stray pebble in the road that caused the man to briefly lose his balance. It took only a second for him to recover, but that allowed the warrior’s swing to connect this time, tearing a long gash in the bandit’s tunic but only barely gashing the skin underneath. Gods, he’s fast, Greghan thought.Ravani had met the last bandit with his magical sword in hand, but in their initial exchange it was the elf who was had to give way, clutching a fresh gash to his side. One of the female bandits was still sniping from the cover of the bushes, while the other drew her sword and rushed at Folgar. The dwarf held his ground, and as the woman got within reach he suddenly stepped forward and touched her on the arm. She screamed as a jolt of electricity shot into her. The shocking grasp dazed her enough that she was unable to react as the wizard retreated behind Leana. The bandit took a swing at the halfling and hit her in the shoulder, but her chain shirt absorbed most of the force of the impact and she held her ground. She lifted her sigil, which began to glow as she presented it toward the bandit. “The Light has abandoned you,” she said. The bandit screamed and clutched her head as the cleric’s toll the dead spell took hold, and she felt lifeless into the dirt of the trail.“Screw this!” the bandit in the bushes yelled; she turned and ran. The one fighting Ravani also fled; the elf lunged after him, but the movement caused the wound in his side to flare with pain, and he missed.“Your friends are abandoning you,” Greghan said to Pral.“Alas, it is the nature of the business,” Pral replied. He took a step to the side, as if intending to lunge at Leana, and when the warrior shifted to block he thrust suddenly up with the rapier. This time the tip of the blade punched through Greghan’s armor, and he felt a white-hot shaft of pain tear through his body. He gasped and staggered back, trying to bring his sword up to forestall the inevitable follow-through, but he saw that the bandit had also retreated, back to the edges of the bushes. “Until next time,” the man said, before he turned and disappeared.Ravani had started to dash after his retreating foe, but Leana forestalled him. “Let them go,” she said. “There could be traps, and we have wounded.”The elf reluctantly broke off the pursuit, and rejoined the others, wincing as he pressed against his wounded side. Blood had soaked through his shirt and was bleeding into his trousers. “Bloody bandits,” he said. “At least we got one of them.” He looked at Greghan. “That guy sure carved you up.”“He was fast,” Greghan gasped. “Faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”Leana checked his injury. “I’m out of magic,” she said. “We have the potion…”“Save it,” Greghan said. “I can make it back.”“Stubborn,” the elf said, grimacing as Leana examined his own wound. “I can respect that. Gods above, that was a fight.”“Stubbornness can get you killed,” Leana muttered. “But I agree that perhaps it’s best not to linger here. If we can get back to that spot along the river, I can clean your wounds, and let Folgar treat you with his healer’s kit.”“Get her crossbow and sword, Greghan,” Ravani said, gesturing toward the dead bandit. “And don’t forget to check the boots, sometimes they hide coins or a knife there.”“What about the body?” Greghan asked.“They can come back and bury her, if they like,” Ravani said. “Otherwise, the crows can have her.”The companions, bloody and battered but alive, resumed their trek toward the safety of the Keep.Game Notes:As I hinted in the earlier post, this fight would not have gone well if the party hadn’t leveled to second after the goblin cave. This encounter is a death trap for a first level party, but at least the game booklet suggests that first-time DMs should save it for last. There were a few ineffective attacks on each side that I didn’t detail in the narrative. Pral’s last hit on Greghan was a crit, and that would have taken him down if not for the extra hit points from the leveling. Similarly, Folgar would have fallen to the bandits’ initial volley, which would have put the party in quite a dangerous position. Pral still had 30 hit points left at the end of the fight, but I figured he probably wasn’t the type to fight to the grim end. It won’t be the last we see of him and his band.</blockquote>

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