I have a cunning plan, m'lord

I was concerned about getting out of the fortress alive, and figured my best bet was to get to bed early and then slip away in the morning while Ili was running the others through military drills or something.

However we were all summoned to see the General who told us that their latest supply wagons had been hit by bandits, and they needed someone to go investigate. Oh yeah, sign me up for that one!

The others were trying to work out some plan for finding the bandits, so I pointed out the obvious—if we look like merchants and head through the same area, chances are they’ll find us.

Can you say “works like a charm”?

We were only on the road an hour or so when some arrows were fired from an upslope vantage point. Nobody was seriously hurt. Well, none of us at least. Obegard threw a fireball amongst the archers, four guys who looked like soldiers from The Aerie.

I had bought a bow because I was sick of Malakar always carrying on about how I should have a ranged weapon and I have to say I just don’t see the point at all. Sure, I hit a couple of the guys but it just doesn’t provide the same satisfying feeling as when you feel the blade slide through a gap in your opponent’s armour, past a bone, and twist it deep into a vital organ.

Malakar pulled some magical trick on the four dwarves that tried to attack us from behind. He managed to encompass them all in a circle of protection from evil, which broke the magical compulsion making them attack.

With Malakar’s shouted encouragement Ili rendered the remaining attackers unconscious and the dwarves filled us in. They’d been taken captive 3 months before and didn’t remember anything since then. One of them was able to provide us with detailed information on where we had to go and also told us about the huge floating eye living in the cave they’d been taken to.

We took all our captives back to the watchtower from where they would be taken back to The Aerie and hopefully the Wardens would be able to break the influence on them.

Then we worked our way up to the mountain we’d been told about. I went ahead to check out the cave and there wasn’t much to see, but there were a half dozen guards scattered around.

While the others took them on I scouted through the areas that had been blocked by the guards, and found a huge tunnel heading down.

With the guards taken care of we also found a group of prisoners, including many survivors from Splintercross, the devastated village in Deverania, and a couple of Deveranian nobles, one of them badly wounded.

The Warden called for help and three more Wardens appeared to take the prisoners back to The Aerie, while we headed down the tunnel after the floating eye and the remainder of his captives.