Re: In the Oytwood - a new beginning
Nurzhan eventually manages to climb down from his tree without suffering any further misfortune, collects the arrows carried by the orcs and finds himself a better set of studded leather armour on one of the orcs that Grakk had slain.
By the time he and Bulldust have finished stripping their orcs' corpses of their armour Minmorc and Riza have finished off the last few orcs and made sure there are no survivors. Bulldust very considerately leaves behind 4 of the shovels he was carrying, perhaps so anyone finding the dead orcs can dig graves for them?
The fire is left to burn, just the way nature intended.
The rest of the group was already moving south away from the battlefield but Jurz was leading them slowly enough that Bulldust, Nurzhan, Minmorc and Riza soon catch up with them.
Some though is given to the idea of hiding their trail but no one really has any skill in this area. The fire is likely to wipe out any clear tracks in that area, anyway. A bit of thought also reminds some of the group that there have been numerous deserters leaving the front line in the past and no tales of large scale searches to track them down. There is a general reward of 10 gold coins offered for any deserter brought back alive for interrogation (the reward was originally offered for their heads but was changed after far too many heads were brought in with no way to work out which ones were actually deserters) but sometimes a larger reward is offered for named individuals.
The group makes good progress through the forest with a few brief rest stops that allow Bulldust and Nurzhan time to don their new armour and discard the inferior armour they had previously worn.
By the end of the day the group has travelled something like 20 miles south from their initial position at the northern edge of the forest, which would put them at least a quarter of the way through the forest.
Just as everyone is starting to think about looking for somewhere to camp and rest, they suddenly come upon what looks like an abandoned human outpost of some kind. It looks like a group of six wooden structures (4 huts, 1 larger cabin and a barn) surrounded by a 10-foot high palisade formed from logs driven into the ground. The palisade is breached in several places and there is no sign of movement inside.
OOC: Main Game Map updated to show the outpost. Group 0 Map updated to show current location in Geoff.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:52, Sun 02 Mar 2014.