Kingmaker in the Forgotten Realms [IC thread]

[Saintheart]

Thorn River, the Greenbelt, the Border Kingdoms
Morning, Third of Kythorn, Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)


Korlann reached the bandit at the top of the rise, and turned the man over.

A shard of wood had gone through the bandit's neck. In virtually any other place or moment it would have been harmless. But the particular way the bandit had fell had somehow managed to jerk the wood upward and it had formed an elegant wooden stake at just the right place and moment for the bandit to collapse atop it with the force of his fall, killing him outright.

The bandits were all dead.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

125 XP for each of you.

In terms of recovered gear, the bandits' bodies turn up the following:

20 gp each, for a total of 80 gp
4 x leather armor
4 x short swords, again of the gladius type - it's a bit curious the bandits you've run into thus far have all been armed with weapons styled from a good century or more ago, but apart from that the weapons are unremarkable
2 x longbows, with 2 x 20 arrows
1 x carcass of a big grey elk buck, which is enough for a day's forage for all of you if it's consumed in the next 24 hours, i.e. you won't have to use up any of your trail rations for a day if you cook this up instead, but it'll spoil if you leave it longer than a day.

Once you've policed all the bodies - I'm assuming they're all going under that dirty tarpaulin the rest are under - and collected what you can, the question becomes: what now?

Distilling everything that was previously discussed so far, I was sensing your group's interested in one or more of the following things right now:
(1) Set out for the wanderwood glade about half a day to the northeast, where you've heard some kobolds have been seen;
(2) Head back to Oleg's Trading Post direct to make some trades and pick up rewards - a couple of bandit heads or hands would suffice to collect the bounty;
(3) Explore this particular hex in order to pick up some XP (and make it easier to travel through here in future).

As a reminder, option (3) would require you to stay in this area for 2 days of exploration time, though again setting a slow, normal, or fast pace affects how many actual days you wind up being in the hex (or indeed whether you get lost.) Again, it's 2 days of exploring time because that figure depends on the exploring party's lowest speed, which is really Mule 1/2 and 2/2 at 30 feet with everyone else variously riding, walking, or on the back of the Company wagon.

At option (2), if you're planning to head for the glade, realistically I can only see one route directly there: plunge northeast, maybe following the line of the bandit tracks back toward Oleg's and then trying to locate the glade once you think you're in the general vicinity of the place. I'd just need to know whether you're setting a slow, normal, or fast travel pace. Fast travel pace would get you there in a couple of hours, Normal pace will get you there about sundown today, and slow pace will get you there around this time tomorrow. The other effects of fast, normal, or slow travel are in the front of the OOC thread if you need to review what they do.

At option (1), if you're planning to head back to Oleg's first, then again you've got a choice of paths - trail the bandit tracks back through the Greenbelt, or follow the Thorn River southeast until you hit the edge of the Greenbelt and then back north, using the edge of the Greenbelt as a guide and then due north once the Greenbelt's boundary swings west. And again you'd need to decide your pace - fast, normal, or slow.

Fast pace trailing the Thorn River would (assuming nothing goes wrong) get you back to Oleg's a day and a half from now, normal pace would get you there two days from now, and slow pace would get you there four days from now.

Fast pace direct back through the Greenbelt would (again, assuming nothing goes wrong) get you back to Oleg's around sundown today, normal pace this time tomorrow, slow pace two days from now.

Whichever of these you pick, I'd assume Kuros is acting as your navigator since he's got the highest Survival check at this point, which is the applicable skill (unless someone gets a massive WIS modifier anytime soon :) )

Over to you!