A funny think happened on the way home from greyhawk

For Harcourt's benefit

After your time in Greyhawk you and Mopar decided to return to Cirdastan via the land route. The first half of the trip was uneventful and you crossed the border into Pomarj territory unmolested,, sweeping wide to avoid the forces of Cantona you were intercepted by a independent bandit group who believed a 6:1 superiority in men was a sufficient advantage.

The bandits refused Mopar's request that they surrender/drop their weapons and charged right into a wild cross bow shot and the obligatory flash bank which left several men and horses wandering about aimlessly.. (ps pls give jonathan a copy of the final agreed spell, your spell list would be good for him to have too)

The bandits quickly closed around Mopar and the 5 Harcourts but immediately began falling into slumber at Harcourt's feet while Mopar mowed down the bandit leader

Seeing their leader collapse and several magical effects the attackers wisely broke and fled, seeing the opportunity Harcourt pulled out his trusty wand of wonder while Mopar charged after the escapees.

One abraca pocus later and a fleeing bandit transformed into a troll collapsing his horse which he promptly started eating. Mopar tried to engage another fleeing bandit missed his shot and had to turn around and engage the troll who had decided to leave his snack and turn towards Harcourt.

A flurry of troll attacks reduced Harcourt's images while he bathed the troll in sheets of flame, fortunately Mopar cut down the fell beast before claw ever made it to flesh.

7 or 8 bandits were killed(including one troll) 4 healthy horses, gear and a bit of money recovered. One corpse was returned to Cirdastan for questioning (how often do you hear that ?) which showed the bandits were not in pomarj employ (wandering monsters)

upon return to Cirdastan the session reverted to shooting the shit and long term planning.

Consensus from Cirdastanish / cirdastandian / Cirdoid / Cirdish stake holders was

Considering the investment so far in the town and the recent grief we just caused Cantona we should not wander too far off until town construction is complete.

This however does not mean we are simply parking our asses for a year but doing stuff close to home where we can still respond to threats and add our considerable building powers to the project

Things discussed

interdiction of Cantona,, not an outright siege but doing our best to make sure they do not refill the slave pens, import food, rebuild a fishing fleet, get regular messengers.

this might include a few small raids inside the camps to trip down their numbers, destroy food stocks, tools, assassinate leaders, or fouling the wells, forcing them to come out to the river for water where we can pick them off or blow them up.

higher surveillance beyond our normal southern border

My intent is find, track and deal with the human auxiliaries controlled by the Pomarj.
Given the opportunity I would be willing to buy them off in an attempt to use them as spys, lure other groups to their deaths, just get them to leave or even let it be known that should they overthrow the orcs in the town, we would not move to oust them.

While killing them is probably the best option it would be nice to find a couple minor mages that were redeemable, surely for some of them its simply a job (and one they don't like) rather than an affinity for orcish domination.

More counter piracy

While not a priority I'd like to pick off another ship or two
1 Capturing ships is quite lucrative 1 ship = 1/2 tower
2. weaken the enemy, make shipping safer
3. add another ship to our fleet so the town still has a ship if we are out gallivanting

Eventually dealing with the mine
I have no doubt we will hear from the dwarves some time soon with one of several scenarios
Lost cause,
need help plugging holes
more nasties coming out of the underdark- please come help

Rild and Ulthor liked the idea of messing with the Brotherhood's tentative control of Onwal (sp) but others voiced concerns (rightly so) about stirring up another enemy.

Still the information we have from the s charmed monk might give us a lead for a good score, or a one off attempt to knock off someone of power and or great loot. Bare minimum we should give the intelligence to the Onwal resistance

Other regional job offers
We're getting know for our efficiency in doing dirty jobs, I'm sure something will pop in if we hang around home long enough. In a pure number crunching mode I'm sure 1 big adventure that takes 8 months of traveling is not as efficient as 2 or 3 local adventure that we can do in a month.

Wife shopping

Face it, the young nobles of Cirdastan are some of the most eligible bachelors in the region, not only are we rich but we are gaining some small bit of fame and notoriety by doing good deeds in the region, fighting the good fight and founding a town.

Not only could it be of a political or material advantage to find wives of status, I'm sure at least some of our members would feels some need to ensure their work/money/legacy and town get passed on to someone other than Soloman/Libram who will have control after we all die while adventuring.

Attaching to powerful families of greyhawk would be good but don't neglect the idea of displaced nobles from overrun lands, they could be convinced to settle and start over or at least have a retinue of retainers, men at arms we could call upon in an emergency. Someone might get lucky and score another mage/ priest/psionisist/adult movie actress

I'm actually surprised we've not be visited or contacted by people shopping their daughters around.

Harcourt I know you wish to "find yourself" I will pay for your commune and even to send someone to your homeland to make inquires if your commune gives you any real leads etc ($$ within reason), consider it compensation for your labor and counter intelligence work in town while we build the walls, but I don't believe their is sufficient support to go on what will undoubtedly be a 6 month + venture at this time. The problem with hanging out with humans, our time means something.

An excellent recounting of the adventure... I probably would have sold the wand of wonder to the wild mage contingent in Grehawk and would have used something like a hold person spell instead but, turning someone into a troll is far more entertaining (and also results in a higher experience award). Other than that I think you have captured Harcourt's modus operandi quite well.

I agree we can not afford to leave the "Stan" for an extended period right now. I can certainly wait to find out about Harcourt's past, Harcourt however is likely getting a bit more impatient. That said, I would think that from a role playing perspective, he would be very happy with the offer to commune and send intelligence gatherers in his place. If a few people go, it might allow for a more efficient use of time and a greater reach than doing it himself. The specifics of their mission will need to be figured out.

I like the idea of capturing ships and the Cantona interdiction(s) to keep us occupied.

We are only 1 level away from having access to teleport on a regular basis, I suspect we will travel more and farther when it doesn't take so damn long to get home.

As we've stopped over a couple of times in Gyrax, so getting to your homeland will be easy with teleport and the portable hole.

What you make of our extended layover is entirely up to you and your willingness to badger the DM for side business.

When you put it that way, it seems ridiculous to go on a 6 month journey when we will be able to eliminate travel times in what could be a relatively short period of time (i.e. the time needed to level up). If we level up in the next 5 months, it would be faster to do that and teleport than it would be to travel all the way there and back. Harcourt is appeased and will put his considerable construction prowess to work (as well as whatever else he may find to do).

I'll still take you up on the commune and intel offer as it could make our journey that much more efficient when it happens.

It gets even better than the express route to
Gryax

We also have
the Amedio village and the rot grub city which = more trade goods and giant pearls, plus the pyramids are great places to hunt the rot grub undead from

The Felreev and a number of cities between. - swatting Iuz's troops and supporting/supplying the Felreev rebels.

The dwarves
the mine - access to the underdark
the portal room in the old Suel city - access to other parts of the world
the seed making shrine- free uber quality seeds for planting

Not a lot of east west flexibility but north/south we can go from the northern boreal forests to the equator. Especially useful to move from front to front in the Pomarj, we wanna cause a fuss we teleport into enemy territory with a variety of faked liveries, cause mayhem and return home. We don't have to make it obvious who we are while we pull their attention away from Cirdastan.

Good write-up.

kubera wrote:

rot grub city

That description will definitely hurt their tourist dollar . . . er, gold piece.

How long are we prepared to stay in Cidastan? A year? [If the DM doesn't intervene--i.e., cause something to happen--theoretically, we could stick around for years and years.]