Deal with the woodsmen yourself

Leaving your outcasts to take out the lumberjacks would involve you waiting for the better half of a century as you are confidant of their inferiority but sending the two girls to deal with it themselves would deprive you of them and involve you waiting for their return. You could always go and deal with the situation yourself and have the two girls tag along to render assistance and since you can now command thirty outcasts yourself, you would easily be able to overwhelm the enemy position and maybe gain some experience in the kind of large scale fighting you are expecting in the future. So it is decided, you shall deal with these lumberjacks yourself with the aid of your new heroes.

“I take it you were successful then, are you ready for your next assignment?” you grin at the two girls, knowing full well that you would be able to tell them to do almost anything right now.

“Fine, I ‘ave a feelin that karla ain’t gonna be sayin’ ‘no’ anytime soon anyways” You still have no idea what the other girl’s name is or her class and level but you guess you will find out her class and level soon enough.

“Good, while you were gone, I sent a party of my brethren to combat some woodsmen in the forest on the other side of the village, I am headed there now to reinforce the position and finish the battle. The axes and other tools of the Lumberjack trade would make useful weapons for my growing army” You notice that you are now a head taller than Karla and looking the other girl square in the eyes, you would have to guess her size to be close to 5’11 and had blonde hair tied back in a rough pony tail. It was at this point that you realised you had only just now payed attention to either of their physical appearances above the shoulders, you tell yourself it was the fault of the very revealing vest that showcases the blonde’s cleavage nicely, very nicely indeed. You turn to Karla, half to stop yourself from staring at the other girl’s breasts and half to wait for her response. Karla had brown hair that reached down and around her shoulders with hazel eyes set into a slightly angular face that was almost elfish.

“Do we have to kill anything?” asked Karla, she is apparently having doubts about helping you.

“No, we’re support classes, meanin’ we don’t do the frontline combat, we leave that to tha orcs and just buff ‘n ‘eal” The other woman answered for you and lightly surprised you as she had been the most **** so far

“So we just sit back and use spells? We don’t actually have to fight?” Karla looked like she might be getting back into the spirit

“Well, if you let us go alone, all those outcasts you just saved are going to get killed by the woodsmen . . .” you let that train of thought sink in and see an immediate response as karla regained her look of determination. She is really gullible . . . this is going to be fun You think to yourself as you glance at both of them to make sure they are on board before you stride off on a course that would let you skirt the village and get you to where the battle would be raging.

The sun was high in the sky and had begun to make its journey towards the horizon by the time you had reached the outskirts of the lumberjack camp. As you had suspected, the lumberjacks were quite easily beating your outcasts, in fact, they were one-shotting your outcasts before they could attack back. The lumberjacks themselves consisted of a couple dozen big burly men standing around the camp and smashing your brethren with wood cutting axes. The leader of the woodsmen was standing in the middle of the camp resting one hand on his axe and stroking his epic orange beard with his other hand, he was basically a stereotypical lumberjack right down to the red plaid shirt half undone to reveal thick curly chest hair and with bulging muscles. His axe looked like it would serve you well as a weapon though. Your outcasts consist of a dozen spawn points with an outcast popping up every second or so and charging straight at the closest woodsman.

You size up your options as you look around the camp, your eight outcast honour guard waiting a bit away from you with the two girls standing beside you. The obvious choice would be to attack the woodsmen so that you could use your outcasts to wear down the leader in numbers but perhaps having a weapon of your own would be best.

“Now Karla, in these sorts ‘a situations, the goodies ‘n baddies come in continuous wave like a tug-a-war, meanin’ ya gotta do somthin’ yourself or it ain’t gonna go anywhere fast. Most a’ the time the thing you gotta do is kill ‘nuff of ‘em so that your boys can go on in but in this case we gotta kill the leader or they’re just gonna keep on comin’” The busty blonde gave you your next course of action for you, which was most helpful and that makes you wonder if she knew you had no idea what to do first. Also, you notice that her accent is all over the place, sometimes she sounds normal and other times she sounds almost incomprehensible but you put that out of your mind, she IS comprehensible and that is all that matters.

“I’m going to charge the leader myself, I want you girls to make sure I don’t die before I can take him out. OUTCASTS!! Attack the woodsmen in that small area!” you indicate to the area directly between you and the leader where five or six woodsmen had congregated and on your orders, all of the outcasts in the area shifted their attack to that small point, including your honour guard. You give your troops some time to get stuck in before you start walking towards the leader himself who was now hefting his axe. A look behind you and you notice that the blonde is holding a lute and has already begun to strum a few cords. A bard eh? No wonder she wasn’t holding a weapon You think to yourself before turning back to the matter at hand.

You find yourself standing before the lumberjack leader, a quick glance above his head reveals his name is Jack Hardwood, you stifle a chuckle at the innuendo of his name, he must have been teased a bit as a child.

“So you are the thing that has terrorized my camp” Jack the lumberjack spoke with a deep and gravelly voice, it’s as if someone tried to make him as stereotypical as possible.

“I like your axe, would you mind terribly if I abscond with it? Over your corpse of course” you grin at your use of such civilised language, but then you wish you could have a proper conversation with a civilised man, not some barbaric bard, a naive girl or an anti-social woodsman, though Karla might end up becoming a better companion as time continues. Jack merely ‘huff’ in reply to your comment about his axe and proves your point of his anti-social behaviour, eliciting a grin from you.

Feeling like you had a bit of spare stamina to go around, you decide to get the show on the road and attack. You get within his striking distance and see his axe come flying at you but you, for some reason, find it very easy to just get out of the way. Repositioning to Jack’s left side where the axe blow ended up, you through all your rage into your punch, hitting poor Jack hard but you don’t feel the slightest bit less angry so you hit him again, and again, and again. You spent a good thirty seconds laying on the punches before you finally feel your rage drain out of you like someone just pulled the plug out of a bathtub, Jack the lumberjack is not looking very good for wear right now however as his health bar is now in the read. I wonder why I can’t see exactly how much HP he has You think to yourself as you throw another punch and reposition to Jack’s right side so he won’t be able to his you easily.

A few more seconds of punching and evading Jack’s axe, you land one solid hit into his chest and watch as your hand goes straight into him and out the other side, you pull your arm free as Jack the lumberjack falls to the floor and takes a permanent nap. You look up at the sky and roar as loud as you can over the victory you just achieved, Jack only managed to hit you once but that had been a third of your HP that disappeared. You bend down and grab the axe that Jack the lumberjack discarded when he retired from life and look at it.

Item acquired!

Jack’s axe – A large wood cutting axe that has been honed to a good edge with loving care, its extra size means that it takes extra strength to wield over a normal wood cutting axe but if and when it hits, it hits hard. +40 damage *requires strength 16* -40% to hit *requires axe skill 2*

Nice weapon, shame I can’t yet wield it You think to yourself as you look around, there were still several dozen woodsmen walking around and now that you have dealt with their leader, they should be easy enough to take care of so you heft your new toy and order your outcasts to attack one group of woodsmen while you take on the next. Your new axe allows you to kill the woodsmen in one hit since you do a solid fifty three damage per hit but you only get one hit off so if you miss, you have to dodge for a bit before you can find an opening to strike again.

As you kill your fifth woodsmen you notice that the axe is starting to feel more comfortable in your hands, you wonder at this and decide to look at your stat sheet;

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Level Up!

Orc Raider

Level 3-4 Orc Outcast

Health 200-230

Attack 13-16

Strength 13-16

Toughness 10-14

Armour 0

Magic 0

Magic Toughness 2-3

Affinities Crude, Blunt, Axe

Proficiencies Axe - 1

Skills

Rage – Channels the rage of your Orcish blood into a battle frenzy that doubles your attack power for 30 seconds

Command – Passive, allows you to command lesser ‘Outcast’ orcs up to 30 points per level.

Command points – 60

Spells

N/A

Inventory

Jack’s axe – A large wood cutting axe that has been honed to a good edge with loving care, its extra size means that it takes extra strength to wield over a normal wood cutting axe but if and when it hits, it hits hard. +60 damage -20% to hit *requires axe skill 2*

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So, that was the dinging sound I heard a little while ago you think to yourself as you look at your new stats and now you do a good seventy six damage with only a quarter chance of missing, can command twice the number of troops and gained some weapons for your troops, or so you hope.

Looking around you see your eight honour guard have formed up on you again as the woodsmen have apparently been wiped out completely, they are now armed with wood cutting axes and are slightly bigger and more toned than the rest of the outcasts, they read as ‘outcast tribal’ now rather than just ‘outcast’ but they are still level two and only have sixty health each.

“So now ya got what you wanted, weapons for the troops an’ experience for ya’self, what do you want us to be doin’ next? I’m guessin’ you got somethin’ planned for us?” the bard had come up to you with Karla in tow, you guess she was the reason why you were now full health again so you give a nod in her direction which seems to have been noticed because she lit up with delight. Speaking of next activity, you had to decide what to do next, you could try your luck with attacking the town now that you have some troops with weapons and had a weapon yourself, or you could wait for a bit and marshal up some extra troops now that you could command a few more. There was also supposed to be a supply caravan that comes through this area and onto the next, it might have some useful items for you to pilfer but this was all you could come up with off the top of your head, maybe it might be an idea to wait for a while and gather your thoughts, have the two girls do some extra useless activities to earn some more Exp.