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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 472344" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chinese Take-outChapter 45, "Assault on the Slaver Camp", September 24, 1018, 3:00 P.M. Serita sends down her first Lightning Bolt into the leader’s tent for seventy-eight points of damage, which  serves as the signal for the assault to begin.    The sound and flash of Serita’s massive lightning bolt also alerts the enemy camp to the presence of the party.   The slavers emerge from tents throughout the camp, with those exiting tents nearest to the four prisoner cages proceed towards them as guards.   A group of thirteen horsemen on the practice field stop to see what is going on.   The eight separate groupings of the Silver Moon and their allies mount their assaults and/or rescue missions.  The main assault group headsacross the training ground, with the dwarves Lannon and Duegar branching off to the side.  Cassie, Mark, Mojo and Narg head straight across towards a row of tents that three enemies emerge from, each attired as clerics.Meanwhile, the quartet of May, Way, Mei and Chi quickly cross the training ground, making a beeline towards the leader’s tent to attempt to kidnap Chi’s sister.  The other members of May’s team, the gnomes Yala, Yulo and Yun, make their way towards the first cage, using some tents as cover.   Fiona and Toshiro open up the gates to the eastern corral, and she then uses her wand of fear to panic them.   Both then move into the corral.   Kim, Lono and Timothy make their way into the camp from the other corral.   As enemies begin to emerge from the tents, they find cover behind trees.   They then proceed to the back of a line of tents near the first prisoner cage.Several enemies emerge from a tent and move towards an unguarded cage occupying two Hengeyokai, one in the crane humanoid biped form, the other in human form. Lannon and Duegar decide to take them on these enemies directly, with Duegar charging forward.   The horsemen from the training track turn and begin to make their way through the camp, making them excellent targets for Aradyn, who unfortunately misses his first two shots by rolling a pair of “1’s”. Fiona and Toshiro both decide that they can best proceed from horseback.   Given her prior experience riding horses and pegasi, as well as her past occupation as a teamster, she has no trouble grabbing a mount.  Fiona then leads a stampede of a group of thirty horses out of the corral and into the main part of the enemy camp.   Toshiro likewise grabs a horse and rides off into the main camp.  Nearby, the gnomes spot five enemies who have emerged from a line of tents near the prisoner cage, and have clothing and weapons normally associated with magic-users.  The gnome wizard Yala throws a Fireball into the nearest three, dropping them. Cassie and one of the enemy clerics toss spells simultaneously, hers being a Silence spell, which prevents them from any further spell casting.   Their spell is a Hold Person, which both Narg and Mojo save from.  Mark, unfortunately, gets held.  Since he is in the rear of the group the other three do not notice that he is stopped.   The quartet heading towards the leader’s tent are almost there, with the monk Chi taking the lead.  He pulls up the side of the flame-engulfed canvas structure, disappearing inside.  The other three head around towards the back of the tent.   Cheveyo begins chopping the ropes off the rail posts to the corral.  He then runs into the corral, projecting Fear on the horses, which charge around, with many running off into the forests.  He continues to break down rail posts for them to escape.  Narg and Mojo reach the enemy clerics.  One tries to hit him with a board with a handle attached.  “You’ve got to be kidding.  Get a real weapon,” Narg tells him.  Cassie assists against these with a Magic Missile spell, the three low-level clerics not lasting long against their opponents.  Duegar and Lannon continue to fight the men guarding the cage, with Duegar managing to kill two of them and Lannon killing one, both taking a few hits in return.   Not far from the dwarves Aradyn succeeds is dropping one of the horsemen, with a pair of near-perfect shots.   Over by the eastern cage, the gnomes see that six enemies have moved in to guard it.  The druid Yun also sees five trees near this cage, and casts and Entangle spell in order to incapacitate these guards.   The trio then moves in towards the cage.Lono and Timothy start collapsing the tents they are behind, as Kim decides to copy her mentor and casts an Entangle spell onto the trees near the prisoner cage, grabbing four of the five guards.   The cage contains two Hengeyokai, both in humanoid biped form, one of the fox sub-race the other of the owl sub-race.  Two enemy leaders emerge from the burning tent.   One is a half-orc fighter and the other is the orc/ogre hybrid, standing around eight feet tall and brandishing a bastard sword and a short sword.   Narg charges these two, the half-orc attempting to stop him with a lasso.  Narg swings out his sword-of-sharpness, cutting the lasso in half and charging into the biggest enemy.   Simultaneous to this, Cassie hits the taller one with a Magic Missile spell as Mojo lets loose his Hammer of Throwing into the same foe.  Duegar takes out the guard who had been fighting Lannon, allowing Lannon the opportunity to pick the lock on the cage.  Duegar moves in to fight the remaining two guards by this cage.  Narg strikes at the taller enemy, missing him, but Mojo is successful with his second hammer toss.  The half-orc then uses his own weapon, a magical man-catcher, which is a spiked “U” shaped metal fork at the end of a pole.  The weapon hits, knocking Narg to the ground.   Sword in hand, Narg strikes the wooden shaft of this weapon with the Nargblade, destroying the polearm.  Narg tells the half-orc “You should forget about the strings and sticks and try using a real weapon instead.”Cassie sees the group of horsemen now charging towards the leaders tent, and tosses a fireball into their midst.   This catches and drops four of them, causing the next pair of horses to panic and thrown their riders.  This leaves only two riders in front of the fireball and four behind, one of which then gets felled by two more of Aradyn’s arrows.At the eastern cage, the Monk Yulo opens the lock, freeing the Druid Chong-Tai and his falcon companion Chu-Tai.  The two horsemen who had escaped the fireball charge towards their leaders, but are then cut down by a lightning bolt cast by the gnome wizard Yala.  The other three riders on the training ground now decide to retreat just as Aradyn picks off another one of them.  The two scatter into the forests.   Meanwhile, Cassie’s owl Deanna alerts her to the eight horsemen charging towards her from 150 feet behind, apparently one of the patrols that had been returning to the camp. Narg regains his footing, getting struck by the taller enemy leader’s shortsword.  Mojo again places a successful hammer throw into this foe.   The half-orc draws a wakazashi, a type of Oriental shortsword.  He successfully stabs Narg, barely penetrating Narg’s armor for minimal damage.  Narg casually looks towards this foe, and says “Ah, so you took my advice and are finally using a blade.  See how much better that works.”   Cassie finally notices that Mark is held, and breaks him from this.  Mark immediately charges forward to assist Narg.  Mojo also begins to move forward, still throwing his hammer at the enemy.Kim, Lono and Timothy make their way to the western cage.  Lono is unsuccessful at picking the lock.  He then notices that each of the six iron sides to the cage were apparently brought in separately, as there are two hinge bolts on the outside of each side.   He begins to pry off one of the bolts.   Kim begins a long conversation with the humanoid owl.  [Kim's player wanted to start an owl Hengeyokai as a new playing charter, so both of these are hers. Another player comments “It’s official, you’re part of the group when you wind up talking to yourself as part of the role playing.”   Another player adds “That only becomes a problem when you start arguing with yourself.”]The monk Chi emerges from the back of the flaming leader’s tent, seeing his sister cautiously moving away to the south, using trees as cover.    She is apparently waiting for Fiona to ride close enough to her for a backstab, so does not notice as her monk brother covers the thirty-foot distance to her.   His allies also see him, and follow in that direction.With his exceptional strength, Lono gets the second bolt off the cage, and pries apart the two sides enough for the two Hengeyokai to get out.  They then head over towards the next cage, which only has two guards around it.  This cage has two Hengeyokai of the duck sub-race.   “Great,” comments Narg's player, “We came here to mop the floor with a high level mage and we end up rescuing a pair of ducks!”  “How the mighty have fallen,” another player states. Duegar continues to fight the remaining guard, as Lannon releases the two prisoners from the cage, then goes to assist Duegar.    Working together, they soon drop the remaining foe, but another slaver then charges in to hit Duegar from behind.  Duegar strikes him back, and then is assisted by one of the rescued  Hengeyokai in human form, who strikes down the enemy with a karate chop to the neck. Narg and his foes continue to fight.  Mark charges in, also striking at the taller of the enemy foes, with Mojo’s hammer again connecting.  Between the three of them, he falls.   They then pivot towards the half-orc, who successfully strikes Narg twice this round.  Deciding that the fighters now have the lone enemy leader under control, Cassie lets a fireball into the eight horsemen charging down on her.  The fireball drops the front four, the next two panicking and their riders dismounting to calm them.  The rear two riders break off to the side, continuing to charge towards her.Chi grabs his sister, who struggles to get free from him.   May, Way and Mei are soon upon them, and help Chi to tie and gag her.   The four then start to head off to the east, as the clearest path out of the camp, followed by their three gnome allies.    Fiona’s stampede charges straight into the line of tents as soldiers, trampling everything in its path.   This also works to bisect the camp itself into two sections, preventing a group of approximately sixty enemies to her south from coming to their leader’s assistance.   Cheveyo notice’s her success with this, and changes his tactic from panicking the horses to herding together another stampede.    He kicks down fence posts nearest to the southern row of tents, and starts a stampede out of it.  Serita is now to the point where she can throw another lightning bolt.  Unfortunately, she cannot target the two enemy leaders without also hitting Narg.  She looks for another target, identifying two of the enemies to be a pair of magic-users, and sends sixty-one point bolt into them, which proves to be fatal.A pair of enemy mages begins making their way towards the leaders tent.  Toshiro rides straight towards them, causing one to let loose with magic missiles into his horse.   As the horse falls Toshiro dives from it.  He lands running, sword extended, and skewers the mage.  The other mage prepares to attack him with an oriental weapon called an Uchi-ne, which is essentially a knife attached to a string with a weight on the end.  Timothy casts a Hold Person on the two guards by the next cage.  One becomes held; the other does not, prompting an attack by Lono.    The attack is successful, but the man is still standing.   Four Magic Missiles then strike him from an unknown source, which drops the slaver.   Lono then goes to open the lock.   Cassie continues to check the bodies of the three clerics, finding a candle to be magical in addition to the Tui-fa that the one had used to fight Narg with.  Her familiar Deanna alerts her to the pair of charging horsemen that are now only sixty feet away.   Before Cassie can react to this, however, a fireball drops these two horsemen.   Since the only other two mages, Fiona and Yulo Eng, are both in sight far ahead of her and preoccupied Cassie has no idea who threw the spell.  She decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth.   Meanwhile, the half-orc is finally brought down by the combined efforts of Mark, Mojo and Narg.Nearby, Toshiro tackles his own magic-user foe, and knocks him unconscious.  He the picks up and pockets the man’s Uchi-ne, which is apparently magical.  Next, he stops a pair of horses, typing the mage onto one as a prisoner, and climbing onto the second.Back at the remaining cage holding prisoners, the lock is opened, and the two Hengeyokai fly out in duck form.   “That’s the last of the prisoners,” Timothy yells.   “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Cassie yells back.</blockquote>

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