2nd Pharast, 4710 AR. The newest heroes of the Stolen Lands venture forth from Oleg's trading post, to begin their campaign of pacification, settlement, and eventually civilization.

A quick refresher of exploration, now that it's seriously going to matter: Every day you can take 2 actions: either moving or fully reconnoitering a hex. Moving into a hex will only discover extremely obvious landmarks, while taking the time to reconnoiter properly will mark the hex "explored", discover anything not-very-hidden, and give you an opportunity to roll for hidden things. Moving into or exploring forest and hills hexes takes 2 actions each (for simplicity, the hex you're leaving doesn't matter). Therefore you could, for example, spend the 2nd Pharast moving into hex C19, the 3rd exploring it (and dealing with whatever comes up), and then the 4th moving into D18 where the bandits are believed to be located. Charlie can bring you within 500' of the camp without risking detection. Alternately, you can take a few days to explore the plains south of the road first, perhaps checking on the hermit Oleg asked about.

As previously discussed, I'm generally going to assume that your camping routine involves Dubh finding a good spot and then gathering ingredients, Sophia setting up watches, Booker doing some camouflage, and Wilkezag either entertaining or cooking, and we'll only bother with seriously threatening or plot-important random encounters.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:41, Thu 19 Jan 2023.

The group gets on their horses and heads out the gate, waving to Svetlana.  Wilkezag continues the discussion that they hadn't resolved the previous night.  "I think we should go straight to the bandits' hideout, through the forest, but take an extra day and really explore the region as we pass through it.  We don't want to risk having something following us, which you know will show up at the worst possible time."

Will confides quietly to each member of the group at times that he is sure Charlie can't overhear, "The real reason is to give us a better chance to take the measure of Charlie.  If we get into any trouble, we'll be able to see how he reacts.  We should probably even pretend to get into trouble at some point, just to observe him."

"Agreed. I don't think an extra day will kill us, but I don't want to wait too long to get there. Once we have the bandits dispatched, we can take our time coming back, deviate along the river and map out the territory until we need to return for supplies or just a warm bed after getting tired of sleeping out under stars for too long."

She shrugged on her horse, nodding along with Wilkezag's reasoning.

"Of course all that planning assumes we make it to the bandit camp, and then out again. I guess we should focus on the dangers near us first."

She watched Charlie, then the surrounding terrain, alternating between then.

Booker really wished he could manage the spirit steed spell. It was so much eaiser than trying to make a real horse cooperate. Not to mention the spell was much less likely to kill him. "Whenever we do attack the bandits, I need a bit of advanced warning before I can infiltrate the camp." He mentions to the others. "I would suggest we deal with the bandits before we stumble across something dangerous in the wilds."