Location: The Fire
Andalon joins Adoven and many of the others at the campfire at Oleg's trading post the evening thay they arrive en-route from Fort Stag to Restov. He has promised to tell Adoven about their adventures at the Orcy Ring and Fort Stag.
"The last time we were here was just before Henry ordered us south to secure the ring fort we had discovered on our previous scouting mission. When we had found the ring fort - it must be at least a fortnight ago now - there was only one person there; a villainous halforc bandit who had not responded to our calls of greeting when we entered what appeared to be a deserted fort. The place consists of a wooden palisade around a small hill beside a river. There is a watchtower on top of the hill and a warren of tunnels and caves beneath the hill. Well, that villain had attacked us by surprise in those tunnels and very nearly killed Cyrus before we managed to slay him instead.
"So it was several days later before we finally arrived to secure the ring fort. We had already anticipated that the band of bandits who live there would have returned by then, and we were not mistaken. Still, we had no real idea how many they would be, so we crept around behind the fort at night and managed to enter without being seen. We would not have known how to do it if we had not already partially explored the place before. The details, though, must remain our secret for the time being.
"Anyway, we had gotten inside without being detected but that was as much luck as we could really hope for. The bandits were wary of being attacked and had set up lookouts on the walls and tower, so we were discovered as soon as we stepped out inside the fort. There was a bloody battle against the bandits and their strongest fighter - another halforc brute - while their leader, a human wizardess called Lavinia - hurled her magic against us from the safety of the lookout tower up on the hill.
"The turning point of that battle came when Cyrus finally managed to slay that halforc fighter. Half of the remaining bandits fled out the gate of the ring fort, led by a woman named Kressel - a formidable fighter in her own right, and we were able to concentrate on defeating the wizardess in the tower. Fortunately, we prevailed and the ring fort now flies Henry's flag. It turns out that the wizardess Lavinia was mother to those two halforcs and two others already killed in previous battles by Henry's people. Together they were the backbone of that band of bandits based at the ring fort, hence its nickname of the Orcy Ring.
"Well, that was the first part of our adventures concluded successfully. But we learnt more about the main leader of the bandits in this region from the prisoners we captured in that battle. The main bandit leader is known as the Stag Lord, based at another fort beside the lake south of here. Of course, when Henry learnt those details he brought us reinforcements and instructed us to capture the Stag Lord's fort as well.
"This time we knew less about Fort Stag than we had about the Orcy Ring, as the Stag Lord trusted very few of his bandits and no one could tell us much about what we would find inside. We knew it was located atop another hill with high wooden walls around an old, ruined, stone building with three lookout towers and a very strong gate guarding the only entry to the fort.
"Nonetheless, Henry had entrusted us with an important mission and were determined to do our utmost to make it a success. Again we crept up to the walls of the fort under cover of darkness, scaled the walls and launched our assault inside. Once again the bandits had set a number of guards on watch and we were detected soon after we entered the fort. We fought a number of the bandits up on the walkways and lookout towers first but the real battle came when we got down to ground level. The Stag Lord was a deadly archer but the ferocious owlbear he unleashed upon us was just as deadly a foe. Many of my friends suffered terrible injuries in that battle before we finally defeated first the owlbear then the Stag Lord and the last of his bandits. I must give thanks to my lord Abadar for the blessed healing he allowed me to bestow upon my friends during that battle, and the gifts of Erastil delivered by his priest, our friend Rook, or we should not have succeeded.
"After that battle there was one more foe to take care of, as we had heard there was a mysterious, nasty old man who dwelled in the cellars beneath that fort. One of the prisoners from the Orcy Ring believed that old man to be the real mastermind behind the Stag Lord and his bandits. I suspected he might be an evil priest and I expected we would face hordes of undead monsters down there. I was wrong. Instead the old man proved to have some sort of mastery over earth and stone. We were met by traps in the floor that shredded our feet, a great swarm of poisonous spiders, a summoned monster of solid rock with fists of solid stone and another rock monster hanging out of the ceiling that hurled gouts of molten magma at us! That was a fearful battle as we hardly knew how to fight such strange abominations. Fortunately our resources of magic, steel and muscle proved enough to overcome each of those deadly foes. The magma monster was the last to fall and as it hit the ground it transformed back into that evil old man; dead from the arrows that had dislodged him and the fall that broke his body on the floor.
"That was the end of the battle for Fort Stag and, at last, victory was ours."