Indeed, and given Caith's feelings about politics and dense urban development, you can understand why she'd want to take a dragon to town.

Fortunately Caith understands the concept of collateral damage far better than Hollywood scriptwriters, so she wouldn't, even if she could find a dragon to fly in.

Are you not the King's Man, with warrant and writ, a licence to kill, in effect?
Have you not been long enough in Ereworn to know of the old families of nobility as well as the new ones?
Do you not have the trust of Cene, to the extent that he allows you to use his lab without supervision?

Not to put too fine a point on it Deise, you appear to be playing a James Bond type.

So in short, your character would probably know that kind of stuff.
If in doubt, ask the GM.

So, a group of dudes lost a fancy green spear. Then they left a stabbed horse for dead so they could ambush random passerbys in the hopes the spear would come to them, except now the once thought dead horse has given sudden and unexpected birth to.... what appears to be a vampire horse with what I’m assuming is going to be wings?

Just making sure I have my facts straight. :P

In reply to Usopi Venia (msg # 988):
Thats about right. Deise suspects these men are robber knights - though obvious. I am flirting with the following plan:
Shoot the knight standing before me and drop a flash pellet. Mayhem follows. My small mind hasnt thought beyond that yet.

If I have the gist of it, their commander dude lost the spear, and apparently the horse.

And that's not a vampire horse. If I am correct, and I may not be, that is the loyalty and the ferocity of Gat, had Gat been born a horse rather than a dog.

If their commander is the one who stabbed Mari, then Caith understands why they might have reacted that way, but it's one of misguided kindness at best, and sheer ignorant cruelty at worst.

If it's any consolation to you, my small mind keeps hitting the wall of Can the party drop enemy two knights fast enough to terrify the archers into submission?

Maybe. They're polite, but they have some unpleasant implications.
If the rest are mercenaries, could buy them out, but they may take that as incentive to rob the PCs anyway.

META: Ah, it's the mating of the female horse with a male hippogriff!  The evil Duke has some in his stables, but none of us know that...

In reply to Caith Cernach (msg # 991):

There are four knights - two on each side. Eight archers. Four knights are the key. Pretty lousy thing to kill a man having a drink. Situation may be defused - I reckon one of the Knights (Robert) realises that we might be more trouble than we're worth. Deise is going to try and play that up a bit. However, when he looked at Deise he was thinking about something - sizing me up maybe? If they make to raise bows or go for weapons then Deise is all in. Reckon I could bow down and still have the flexibility of the pellet.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:40, Sat 07 Dec 2019.

Well, hopefully the robber knights from Albion aren’t super religious. True Faith followers can sometimes be.... touchy about witches and magic. :P

If we end up fighting them I’ll send Gat off after one of the groups of archers. He’d get there much faster than me, they probably won’t have armor to heavy for his teeth to bypass, and he’s as strong a combatant as I am so he should be pretty effective at throwing disarray in to their ranged attacks. I’m sure Caith and Leofwyn can both do some real damage to the knights with their magic.

Honestly I was more worried that the foal wasn’t an actual pregnancy, but instead was some sort of dark ooze creature that had been feeding off the horse’s life force to survive. Or maybe that it was intentionally left to cause chaos in our back line as the robber knights attacked. Good thing it is just a baby, even if it is a weird baby. :D

Yeah, the only clue any of you have about that is one of the servants muttering about how the horses the stable was originally built for flew away.

In reply to GM (msg # 995):

Guess now we know where at least one of them flew off to then.
A farm a few days south from here.
But Brannon's probably going to start chewing his fingernails down to the quick again if the PCs divert to take Mari back where she came from.

Usopi wouldn’t mind taking her back, though I guess we can keep them and take care of the baby?

I’m also fully down to fight these dudes. Usopi hasn’t heard any of the conversation, but above table Usopi thinks bandit knights are worse then just being bandits. We are still in Ereworn though, so I guess technically it’s King Corbin’s responsibility? Whatever the group wants is fine with me.

In reply to Usopi Venia (msg # 997):

It strikes me that knights without armour or weapons are considerably less dangerous as bandits. Robbing robbers is entirely fair. ;)

As I said before, Caith can deal with most ranged weapons, if the party sticks close to her they can probably tank through normal arrowfire to the knights in a standard battle.

Caith just wants to know which one stabbed Mari.


And we're just about at 1000 post limit for this thread too.

Well, we have plot armour that syas we NEED to be in Glissom City in a week so...

Also, arms and armor sell for a nice chunk of change.

Not all of you....

In reply to Usopi Venia (msg # 997):

I support you guys fighting! You have my moral support!
You have a big group so sure win!

Pragmatically speaking, foal needs their mother for a couple of weeks at least.

Dant's a big problem to handle even for an experienced horsebreeder, but is far more innocent than the company his mother was keeping.

Bandits are gonna bandit, regardless of legal borders. So it's kill, capture or terrify out of being bandits.

Well, if the options are kill, capture, or intimidate them out of banditry... I guess we’ll kill some and intimidate the leftovers? I doubt they fold permanently without a good show of strength, and I don’t know what we do with them if we capture them. :P

In reply to Usopi Venia (msg # 1004):

They not doing very well as bandits under their current commander, perhaps they'd do better as paid mercenaries under a different employer?

OK lets break this down and figure out what it is that needs to be done about them.

The knights are the command staff of this lot. Take them down, and we've got a bunch of archers to contend with.

Caith has a spell for dealing with normal arrows and most other missile weapons (Not magic weapons, and not 300lb boulders either!).

If this lot have any magical missile weapons, Caith should be able to tell on sight.

Knights in heavy armour are good targets for ENTANGLE spells. Disarm and strip them of armour and they're considerably less threatening as bandits.

Could use the archers ourselves, depending on how many are still capable of holding a bow with the wits scared out of them.

Using Gat to terrify the archers is a good idea, I'm open to any others on offer, including getting on down the road and not looking back.

Gat, Aphail, Deise and maybe Brannon with a bow harrying the archers would probably be pretty effective.

Leaving the four knights for Usopi, Turren, Leofwyn, and Caith? I figure the knights won’t really be that hard with yall’s magic powers, and then we go running for the archers to support?

Yeah as much as I personally want to move on, ol' Turren is only waiting for a more optimal moment to clean them off the road. At any rate I feel like I'm chiming in too often haha so I'm going to try to tone that back. I've not had a Dragon Warriors combat (or game) for decades as an actual player, so please forgive me!

TBH, if these lost lads don't fight fair normally, then there's no reason the PCs should take them on in a fair fight.

But if you want to be arrow proof? Stick close to Caith. The more she has to throw into defensive magic, the less she has to put into offensive and healing magic. The more I look at this, the more it's got to be a surgical strike, not a drawn out battle, and the PCs aren't set up for surgery right now.

Still, it was a cracking good speech there, Turren, even if only Deise heard it IC, so please don't feel shy about posting in future.

Please feel free to keep chiming in. :)

In the New Thread No. 7