The Village

You awaken to the grinning face of Lauran laying next to you with your arms still firmly wrapped around her. In the background, you see Eleanor give Karla a strange potion who drank it immediately.

“Seems ya finally decided to wake up eh?” Lauran said as she gives you an affectionate kiss “Last night was fun, maybe we might do it again eh?”

“So long as you two aren’t as loud as you were last night . . . or better yet, we aren’t anywhere near you” said Eleanor, giving you a quick smile before turning to a pile of loot and rummaging through it

“Well we ‘ad best get ready an’ all, I’m thinkin’ we got a lot ahead of us eh?” you let Lauran escape from your grasp as she gets up and finds her clothes. “Odd but I got the inclination to put on something a little less revealin’ must be the booze, that was some good wine ya had last night eh ellie” You wonder if she is trying to tell you something as she pulls on her form fitting trousers and starts working on her leather vest but struggles to do it up due to how tight it is. Seeing her struggle, you get up, place your arms around her chest and do her vest up for her.

“Are you two a couple now?” asked Karla While Eleanor continues to rummage through her loot pile.

“I dunno about that, we’ll see what happens after we take that village of ours eh?” you wonder why she is saying ‘eh’ so much but you put that out of your mind as well. “So what’s the plan big guy? Just gonna barge on in and get ta killin?”

“I was planning something of the sort, from the guards they usually have out and about, I could probably do this with just you girls but I think it would be better to be on the safe side and have all the outcasts I can command there” You finally give yourself a voice to this morning’s proceedings as you look around the camp.

“So what exactly are we to do with the village inhabitants we don’t end up killing” asked Eleanor, turning momentarily to look at you as she speaks.

“I was intending on enslaving the ones we don’t kill and only killing the ones that resist . . . taking the village and making it into an outcast village where all who are outcast from their own may be welcome . . . I’m also going to be using it as a jumping point for raiding” You say as you watch Eleanor return to her rummaging.

“Do we need to take slaves . . .” asks Karla, her naive self coming through yet again and Eleanor finally retrieves the object she had been looking for and pulls it out of a pile, scattering bottles around the site to reveal a leather vest with carved wooden plates on the chest and over the stomach

“Here, put this on, it’s better than nothing” she says to you as she hands the armour to you

Item acquired!

Wooden breastplate – A leather vest with wooden plates covering the most vital parts of the body, may turn aside a blade or stop an arrow from skewering the wearer but it’s main attribute is it’s weightlessness, this vest is barely heavier than a common tunic. Armour Rating 30

Well isn’t this the useful item you think to yourself as you see the armour rating as being better than your toughness now maybe I might be a match for a guard without Karla.

“Thank you Eleanor, this will prove most useful” you say as you equip the vest and you receive a smile from the elf who is happy to have pleased you, you wonder if her motives are more romantically driven but for now you turn your attention back to the matter at hand.

“Karla, that’s a village full of scoundrels that’d punish us just as quickly cause we were caught talkin’ to the outcasts . . . we are outlaws now, we best make use o’ that and them . . . they can be made to work the fields and provide food to all the hungry outcasts outside of their village” Now that you know a little more about her, you can tell that Lauran’s almost clear language without accent is a good indication of how serious she is treating this endeavour, you also suspect she may be aiming for the same thing you are with Karla.

“I guess it’s okay with this village . . . right? I mean they were hunting people for fun . . . making them help those same people is justice right?” you could see Karla trying to justify the action herself which was a significant improvement on needing you on Lauran to do it for her.

“Yes, that is right Karla, it is justice for all of my brethren they have hurt” you say to Karla to finally push her over the edge into agreement of the plan.

It is high noon when you arrive at the outskirts of the village, only a few minutes’ walk away is the entrance to the village and it is blocked by guardsmen standing in double rows and ready for action. Along either side of the entrance is another row of six guardsmen, bringing the total guardsmen in front of you to twenty four, more than you were expecting but you still think you can do it if you play your cards right with everything you have learned from your various activities.

“Tha’s a bit more than I thought there’d be” says Lauran as she eyes up the troops “But nothin’ a ranger, some outcasts, a bard, mage and an outcast chief . . . or raider I believe ya title is at the moment, but same thing an’ all” You agree with her, it is the same as being chief, and also in the fact that you have tripled your military strength since you started yesterday, this small skirmish may be a huge leap forward for you but in the days and weeks to come, it will be a minor skirmish that you might have been able to handle alone. So now you must decide if you are going to hit them hard and frontal like you were planning last night, this is now rather risky with the number of guards before you but you might pull it off. Eleanor is not quite recognised as an outlaw yet, maybe you can get her in to do some sneaky damage before you attack? There may also be other plans to consider so perhaps you should just besiege the village while you plan the attack in detail? You need to decide now though, before one of your companions does anything.