Stefan the Warlord: Interactive story

[Hoplite]

Basically this is an interactive story about a young warlord. I will include maps, pictures and tell the story and each time a decision needs to be taken I will ask the forum and you have about one day, maybe more, to decide what happens. Can this forum lead the young warlord to victory? Let's see if you can!

Story information: An evil knight named Arthur has betrayed the king and has taken some prisoners to his fortress. The king asked young Stefan to take a part of his army and go free the prisoners and punish Arthur.



Stefan's Diary, Day 1: October 5th, year 513
It is cold outside and my men are hungry. I decided to camp between a small forest and some grasslands with high grass in which you can easily hide. We will have to look if nobody is hiding there. The forest seems to be mainly consisting of pine trees, I don't like pine trees. There is a river going from North to South. I've been told the river is called Brightriver. It seems to be a clean tranquil river with some rocks and slow moving water. There are some strange water plants and animals that I have never seen before. I will certainly have to take some home, my brother will like that. I am tired and am afraid my lack of experience may be to blame if we fail in saving the prisoners from Arthur's fortress. It is of vital importance that my first mission will be a success, as the king put his faith in me.
Arthur doesn't know yet that we are here and we should use this to our advantage, therefore I think we should first send a scout to see how the fortress is doing. From old maps we have learned that there are two trade routes from his fortress, one to the North and one to the East. The fortress is almost entirely enclosed by hills. To the East there seems to be a forest marked as "Draco's Woodlands". I have no idea who this Draco is and I have no intensions of going there.
I came here with in total 3 swordsmen, 5 spearmen, 2 archers, 1 scout and 1 holy shaman. Each of them is loyal to their king and loyal to me.
Tomorrow I will speak to the scout, I think his name was Pyros, to discuss what route he might best take to the fortress. I think there are three main options: going through the river, going through the long grass or going through the hills. I of course know nothing of scouting and am open for any suggestions he might give. I can even expect him to have total different ideas that do not involve scouting at all.
It will be an important day tomorrow.




So to give you an idea, you may now give examples of what the scout tells young Stefan. I will choose the most popular choice to happen. You may draw on this map or future maps if that helps you in any way. Also, I realise the first diary piece was a bit instructive and boring, next installments will be better.
You may for example have ideas of what the scout might think or you could even have completely other ideas of what Stefan should try to do.

[Szilard]

What can the Holy Shaman do? Perhaps he can Aid in the scouting, along with a spearman or two incase of hostiles in the Grass.

[Hoplite]

Some of Stefan's notes:

I start to have second thoughts about that shaman, really. He seems so barbaric. At the other hand he has told me he can heal all minor wounds within just a few minutes. That would certainly be quite useful.

[Szilard]

We should probably clear out the grasslands from the outsid in, and set something up near the bridge leading into the grasslands. We can possibly sneak throughout the hills up to the fortress. Now, the fortress itself was poorly planned for not being built on a hill (From my understanding.) and we could use that to our advantage, giving our archers the upper ground should it come to combat against the fortress. We can spy on The fortress from a hill or the southern Bridge.

[green00706]

i have a map on paint but i cant get it on this text boxs does anyone know how? but it basely say's that i think we should move through the long grass with the army and cross the bridge to go to the north trade route we will be in the hills then so we leave all the swordsmen and have them block the trade route (keep all the goods we gett from attackign pasting carts) then move to the east trade route and block it off with spear men move back inbetwen the trade route and send the scout to scout the fortess

[MrEdwardNigma]

Whatever you do, don't go through the long grass.

Instead, you might want to go round it (north), cross the river before reaching the bridge, as it might be guarded, and then pass through the hills, perhaps set up camp there in a cave or such if a suitable place is found.

Blocking the trade route might at this point indeed be a good idea.

Also, get an estimation of the forces at Arthur's disposal. We might have to make an alliance with this "Draco".

Also, if you say we can decide what the scout has to say, does that simply mean we can pick the route, ro does it mean we can decide what he has encountered?

[green00706]

i think the best think to do is what i said before but we have the men train on the trade route and think about this if there are only 2 trade routes we can just starve him out also have the scout train the archers to scout with him. lastly try to recruit has many people from villages are the area has posiable. o and the maps we have are old maps right so things could have changed?

[MrEdwardNigma]

Well, concerning the whole "training" thing, I'm not sure this works with levelling and such. Maybe it's a more realistic story with just a bunch of soldiers, in which case straining won't do much good?

Also, cutting off the trade routes might seem like a good idea, but we only have a few soldiers, so if we split them up to block the trade routes, and the enemy has more forces, they can justs waltz over us. That's why I think we should first get an estimation of the enemy's troops. When it turns out they have less troops than we do, we don't even need to block the trade routes, we can just surprise attack the castle, but I doubt that will be the case, which is why we might need this "Draco" fellow. Asking other villages seems less likely right now as there are none on the map.

[green00706]

i'm not talking about lvl on the training i mean just getting better at sword fighting and on the them attacking hte soldiers note one they won't know we where there because the only thing that would happen is no carts showing up and the reson i wanted to the throu the tall grass is because you end up by the hills a few soldiers can defend the hills so if one is over run they fall back to the hills

[MrEdwardNigma]

Maybe, but my plan takes them to the hills as well, without going through the potentially dangerous long grass.

Also, I'm pretty sure they can figure out someone's blocking the road if no deliveries come through.

As for getting better at swordplay, they're trained soldiers already.

[Hoplite]

I really hate this.... just as this was really getting popular I have to say that because my computer crashed a day ago, the files in which I had everything stored are currently not accessable. It will take a while for me to get access to them again. So this might have to wait a few weeks.


I hate computers....

[green00706]

that sucks man